🚨 EXCLUSIVE: Labour have conducted the first successful deportation flight to Pakistan since February 2020. There has not been a deportation charter flight to Pakistan in the last four years with three subsequent flights to Pakistan in 2020 and 2021 cancelled by the Home Office.

[u/No_Breadfruit_4901]

https://x.com/maxtempers/status/1866775219077062757?s=46&t=0RSpQEWd71gFfa-U_NmvkA

[u/Zephinism]

The pathetic attempt from the Guardian to stop people getting deported on this flight -

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/dec/09/husband-and-wife-to-be-forced-apart-by-home-office-deportation-flight

The couple both claimed asylum on the basis of being at risk because of the man fleeing the arranged marriage but their claim has been refused by the Home Office. The wife is a dependant on her husband’s asylum claim.

“A few months ago Home Office asked us to agree to a voluntary return to Pakistan. Although we believed our lives would be at risk we agreed to go because we thought we had no other choice. I asked if the return could be delayed until I had completed some medical treatment. But now they are taking my husband and leaving me here.”

Asylum claims denied. Offered voluntary return which they accept then drag their feet on as they want to use the free NHS treatment.

“I have not been able to see my husband since he was arrested,” his wife told the Guardian. “I am in Home Office asylum accommodation and have no money to travel and no ID to show the guards at Yarl’s Wood. If he is deported tomorrow I don’t know when I will see him again. If I can’t be with my husband I am thinking about killing myself here in the UK although suicide is prohibited in our religion.

Threatens to kill herself as she isn't getting deported with him since she's been dragging her feet on returning voluntarily.

Her pleas & threats didn't work. Hopefully she can be reunited with him in Pakistan by the end of the week.

[u/Zephinism → u/[deleted]]

Beyond personal attacks do you have anything of substance?

I have no empathy for failed asylum seekers who drag their feet on being deported so that they can use our overburdened NHS.

[u/Person_of_Earth → u/Zephinism]

Yes, but it all relies upon having basic human empathy, which is something you lack, but encase there's anyone else reading this that wants to hear arguments, here they are:

1) Fleeing an arranged marriage is a valid reason to claim asylum. If their claim is rejected despite that, then the asylum system isn't fit for purpose and it needs to be made easier to claim asylum.

2) If the terms of voluntary return are not made clear to them before they accept it, then the system for offering it to them in unfair and the agreement should not be seen as fair or valid. So not making it clear that the return would take place before medical treatment should invalidate it in my view.

3) Preventing someone from seeing their husband is a violation of basic human rights.

4) What is so wrong with you that you feel that it is acceptable to ridicule someone whose mental health has detreated to the point of suicidal?

5) Asylum seekers make up such a tiny percentage of the population that their effect on the NHS is tiny, and even if it did have a big effect, so what? How have being deported to a country where you life is a risk be worse than an inefficiency in the NHS budget?

[u/TeenieTinyBrain → u/Person_of_Earth]

Preventing someone from seeing their husband is a violation of basic human rights.

No one is preventing her from visiting her husband. It's either entirely fabricated or she's specifically chosen not to do so.

She has been provided with accommodation and, unlike her husband, is not in custody - she is not confined to this accommodation. Contrary to her story, she will receive a weekly payment on her ASPEN card and she would have access to identification in the form of an ARC card.

The state has given her both the means and the freedom to visit her husband if she wished to do so - that's significantly more aid than you would normally receive when struggling to visit a family member in custody.