Cliff Notes
- Migrants often appeal their deportation based on human rights grounds, notably Article 8 of the ECHR, but the court’s decision-making process is described as opaque, with unpublished outcomes delaying transparency.
- Experts argue that withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights may have little impact on the UK’s ability to deport migrants effectively, citing limited empirical data supporting such claims.
- The implications of exiting the ECHR extend beyond immigration, potentially affecting fundamental rights for all in the UK, raising concerns about repercussions, particularly regarding the Belfast Good Friday Agreement.
Inside the courts where migrants appeal removal from Britain – amid clamour to leave ECHR | UK News
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How often do migrants successfully fight their removal from Britain on the basis of their human rights?
The clamour from the right for the UK to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights has been growing – even some high-profile Labour figures say it needs reform.
So, I’ve come to an immigration appeal court – unannounced – to find out how it is used by migrants and their lawyers here.
Decisions delayed, outcomes unpublished
I get to the fourth floor of a large court building in Birmingham.
The first case I’m ushered into to see is a 38-year-old Nigerian man. He came on a student visa – but that ran out.
Just before he did, he put in a claim to stay on the basis of his relationship with a woman, who is originally from Barbados but has lived and worked in Britain since 2015.
The judge, who will decide their fate, dials in via video link. He hears the man’s partner has a 17-year-old daughter.
She lives with her biological father, but the couple insist she is so close to the Nigerian man she calls him “Dad”. This is an appeal being made under Article 8 of the ECHR – the right to a family life.
The following day, it’s a different judge – this time he’s here in person.
The man in front of him is appealing against deportation to Kenya. He came to the UK as a baby with his mother and siblings.
As a teenager, he was jailed for almost 10 years for stabbing a man, causing serious injuries.
It emerges that his case is also based on Article 8 of the ECHR. Since leaving prison, he’s fathered a child who has just turned two.
There are arguments made too under Article 3 of the ECHR – which protects against torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment – due to the man being diagnosed with “generalised anxiety” and depression.
It will be a few weeks before decisions are made on these cases – and the results won’t be published by the court.
I leave, thinking how opaque the process feels.
It’s also easy to see why some politicians are pointing to the ECHR – a treaty signed after the Second World War to protect the rights of everyone in the Council of Europe – as a barrier to removing more migrants.
Is the ECHR really a barrier to deportation?
“I think there’s a strong kind of political dynamic there which has led to, in some ways, you might say, a kind of scapegoating of the European Convention,” says Alice Donald, Professor of Human Rights law at Middlesex University, London.
She’s not convinced that withdrawal from ECHR would make a big difference to the number of people the UK is able to remove or deport.
“The honest answer is we don’t know, we don’t have enough data to say that,” she says.
“The data that we do have, for example, in relation to the number of human rights appeals against deportation by foreign national offenders, which has been very much in the news this year, suggests that it would really make only a marginal difference.”
Those figures, published by the Home Office, reveal that between April 2008 and June 2021, 21,521 foreign nationals due to be deported because of crimes they’d committed appealed, and 2,392 were successful on human rights grounds only. That’s around 181 on average per year.
We don’t have figures for how many other types of immigrants are allowed to stay on the basis of human rights. Small boat migrants who claim asylum would usually rely on another convention.
“In terms of asylum claims, it is governed by the 1951 Refugee Convention as a different treaty,” Prof Donald explains.
“There is, of course, overlapping protection with the prohibition of torture in the European Convention… so if the Refugee Convention were still in place, then of course people seeking asylum would rely on that.”
She also believes there have been “a number of erroneous stories or exaggerated stories”.
Debunking the chicken nugget myth
In February 2025, it was widely reported that an Albanian criminal’s deportation was halted over his son’s dislike of foreign chicken nuggets.
“What actually happened in that case is that it went to the upper tribunal (second-tier immigration appeal court) which ordered that he could be deported. And also specifically said that the evidence to do with chicken nuggets was nowhere near the level required,” Prof Donald says.
What leaving the ECHR would mean
Withdrawal from the ECHR would mean the guarantees it provides would be removed for everyone in the UK, not just migrants.
It not only protects the rights to life, liberty, fair trial and freedom of expression among others, but also prohibits torture, slavery and discrimination.
Pulling out of the treaty could also breach the Belfast Good Friday Agreement – though some say such an outcome is avoidable.
However, in a country where immigration is the top issue of concern for voters, there are some who now think that is a price worth paying.