A mother facing political persecution in her native African country was forced to wait at Heathrow airport for 12 hours before a Home Office attempt to deport her to the Gambia was delayed by a judge.
Fatou Tamba has been held at a detention centre for almost four months, despite living with her family in Liverpool for the last 16 years and becoming a much-loved member of the community.
At 3am on Tuesday, the 55-year-old was taken to the airport and was told her flight would take off at 4.40pm, leaving her lawyers scrambling for a judge to determine her application for a stay.
Her removal was despite an ongoing legal case launched by her lawyers to prevent her deportation, with submissions made of “credible medical evidence” of a deterioration in her mental health.
Just two hours before her flight was due to take off, her application for a judicial review was accepted by a judge and her flight was once again cancelled at the 11th hour.
She was previously left “traumatised” after she was taken to Heathrow in the middle of the night on 6 May, made to wait hours without access to her lawyers or family, and told at the last moment her removal to the Gambia had been cancelled.
As a result, she has been struggling with PTSD while being detained in Yarl’s Wood immigration centre in Bedfordshire, where her mental and physical health has severely deteriorated, her lawyers say.
Despite this, the Home Office issued her with a new deportation notice for 17 June, with her brother Lamin Tamba telling The Independent that they have been given no explanation to justify her removal.
“It’s like they have a personal fight with my sister,” Mr Tamba said. “She has no criminal record, she has never not complied with immigration forces, she wasn’t any danger to the public. She is well known in the Liverpool community, she has worked for charities, she is not a burden to the taxpayer and she has been here for 16 years.”
Ms Tamba had first travelled to the UK in 2009 to visit her brother, with her situation in the Gambia becoming precarious due to her family’s involvement in political activism, which had seen her receive death threats.
As a child bride, she had also been forced to marry a man 30 years her senior while aged just 14, and had been subjected to years of abuse from which she was fleeing.
After several years of living in Birmingham, she relocated to Liverpool, where she has resided for the last eight years, and has moved to live with her partner and has become an active member of the refugee and asylum seeker community.
While her family, including her son, were able to secure right-to-remain visas, Ms Tamba’s was rejected in 2021 and she spent the following years attending monthly appointments with immigration officials.
It was during one of these meetings in March that she was detained unexpectedly, and she has remained inside both Derwentside IRC and Yarl’s Wood IRC ever since.
Over the last three months, her brother claims her diabetes, mental health and arthritis have worsened, and she now requires a wheelchair to attend meetings.
More concerning, however, is the lack of medical support available to her if deported to the Gambia, which is an underdeveloped country with limited access to healthcare.
“She would be returning on her own without support,” Mr Tamba said. “The medical services in the Gambia are close to non-existent, the diabetes she has here will not be treated there.
“She faces a shortened life span, that is a guarantee.”
Her lawyer, Jamie Bell at Duncan Lewis, said: “We are delighted that a judge has agreed to stay Fatou’s removal which was scheduled for Tuesday.
“Despite a series of last-minute decisions and the refusal of the Home Office to give the time of her flight, we are glad to a judge has recognised that there are important questions to be answered before removal can be safely carried out.
“Fatou has now been detained for four months; separated from her friends, families and support in Liverpool. During that time, her mental and physical health have shown a noticeable deterioration. We are extremely concerned about the events of this morning; as the Home Office picked her up and took her to the airport at 3am despite having pending representations with the Home Office. This has caused her further distress.
“We are working as hard as possible to pursue leave to remain for her and to return her to her community in Liverpool.”
A spokesperson for the Home Office said it was their longstanding policy not to comment on individual cases.
