Drug dealer says repeated asylum claims damaging her mental health
A convicted drug dealer has claimed repeatedly applying for asylum in the UK has damaged her mental health.
The Jamaican woman, who was jailed for six years for selling class A drugs, has applied for asylum six times to avoid being sent back to the Caribbean island.
She has secured 'limited' leave to remain until 2026 after her latest appeal, but Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, is reconsidering a claim for permanent residence.
Dr Rachel Thomas, consultant clinical psychologist, told the tribunal the 'repeated act of applying for further leave was retraumatising the applicant and damaging her mental health '.
The case, disclosed in court papers, is the latest example uncovered by The Telegraph where illegal migrants or convicted foreign criminals have been able to remain in the UK or halt their deportations largely on human rights grounds.
Ministers are proposing to raise the threshold to make it harder for judges to grant the right to remain based on Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which protects the right to a family life, and Article 3, which protects against torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
The drug dealer, known only as BXS, came to the UK from Jamaica in 2002. The Home Office ordered her deportation after she was convicted for drug dealing in 2003, just a year after she arrived.
Her asylum claim was initially denied, but in May 2008, she successfully appealed against it under Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights claiming she was at risk of torture or degrading treatment if she was returned to the Caribbean island. She made further successful claims in 2010, 2012, 2015, 2019 and 2023.
In 2015, her son was allowed to enter the country, signalling that she was likely to stay. Before the 2023 application, she applied for an indefinite right for leave to remain but that was refused, with a further limited leave granted until 2026.
This decision is being reviewed by the Government, the hearing was told. The tribunal, held in May in London, heard she had suffered sexual abuse and rape in Jamaica, had been sectioned and was a paranoid schizophrenic. She has an IQ of 61 – classed as mild mental disability.
Upper Tribunal Judge Mark Blundell decided there had been no issues with the judicial process in refusing her indefinite leave to remain. He said the tribunal should not intervene until the Home Office had completed its reconsideration of her case.
Judge Blundell concluded: 'The facts remain very much in dispute, particularly as regards the impact of the denial of IRL (Indefinite Right to Leave) on the applicant's mental health.
'The absence of an extant decision from the Secretary of State is significant, and it is not appropriate, even in this human rights context, for the tribunal to act as the primary decision maker.
'This is not a case in which the tribunal is called upon to make a freestanding assessment on a point of law. It is necessary to consider the time and expense which having the tribunal consider matters would entail.
'If the Secretary of State is permitted to decide the application first, there will be no further cost to the taxpayer and no further expenditure of court time. If the case is permitted to go to trial on the issues set out above, there will be a lengthy hearing.
'I accept that these delays are regrettable in a case involving a person with mental health problems.'
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