The claimant pursued an application for permission to apply for judicial review against the Secretary of State. He had entered unlawfully, and been held in immigration detention, but said that as a child at the time, he should not have bee detained.
Held: Blake J dismissed the application describing the appellant’s argument as intermingling matters of policy with the requirements of the statutory regime for detention. Paragraph 16 permitted the detention of children if the statutory conditions were met, but there were strong policy reasons against such detention unless it was necessary in all the circumstances. He continued: ‘Insofar as the applicant relies upon policy, then in my judgment the application of policy depends upon the assessment of facts made by the decision maker at the material time. At the time this applicant was detained the Secretary of State knew that Hampshire had assessed him to be over 18 in an assessment which they claimed was Merton-compliant. Secondly he knew that the immigration judge, acting on all material available to him in February 2010, had reached a similar conclusion not entirely dependant upon the approach of Hampshire. Thirdly, no discrete submissions had been made to the Secretary of State as to why the immigration judge and/or Hampshire assessment was wrong in fact.’
He held that in the circumstances the Secretary of State had no reason to have reached a conclusion contrary to that of the other authorities.
Blake J
[2011] EWHC 1216 (Admin)
Bailii
England and Wales
Cited by:
At first instance – AA, Regina (on The Application of) v Secretary of State for The Home Department SC 10-Jul-2013
The issue on this appeal is the effect of section 55 on the legality of the appellant’s detention under paragraph 16 over a period of 13 days. At the time of the detention the Secretary of State acted in the mistaken but reasonable belief that he . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Updated: 26 October 2021; Ref: scu.512265