A key Labour migration policy would endanger migrants, according to lawyers opposing the initiative. Any deportees would face inhumane treatment and torture, under the terms of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), they claim.
Warning that returnees are at risk of treatment breaching Article 3 of the ECHR—prohibiting torture and inhuman or degrading treatment—the lawyers want to end deportations to Bulgaria, where the authorities have taken a relatively robust approach to border control.
As things stand, Britain can return asylum seekers to Bulgaria if documents show that they first entered the European Union member state. At least 200 people were returned there last year. (Current practice is separate from UK proposals for offshore migrant processing in ‘the Balkans.’)
George Sheldon Grun—a public-law caseworker from Duncan Lewis Solicitors—pointed to several Syrian clients challenging their removal to Bulgaria. While human rights lawyers are claiming that Sofia’s asylum regime is unsafe, Britain’s Home Office stated:
As the public rightly expects, anyone unlawfully in the UK with refugee status in another country will be removed and returned back to that country if deemed safe to do so.
