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Albanian drug offender to be deported from UK for third time

Balkan criminal tried to argue having a child in UK gave him right to remain under human rights laws

By Patrick Sawer, Robert Verkaik and Tracey Kandohla

‘This appeal was entirely misconceived – he has shown a blatant disregard for immigration control’

AN ALBANIAN drug offender who was twice ordered to leave the UK tried for a third time to stay, arguing that having a family life and a child gives him the right to remain under human rights laws.

Blerim Ismalaj, 30, was deported from Britain in January 2013 after being sentenced to 16 months in a young offenders’ institute for a drug offence.

He twice returned to the UK, the last time in 2019, when he had a child with his British partner.

Relying on his new circumstances, he used the Human Rights Act to attempt to stay, mounting a costly legal battle in which he claimed his three-year-old child’s life would be adversely affected if he was deported for a second time.

But the judge presiding over his appeal has now branded Ismalaj’s case “entirely misconceived” and upheld the decision to deport him a third time.

The case exposes the porous nature of Britain’s border controls, with 12,000 Albanians crossing the Channel in small boats this year, according to Home Office figures, as well as the merry-go-round of deportations and repeated attempts to re-enter the country.

Priti Patel, the then home secretary, signed a deportation agreement with Albania in July 2021 to make it easier for the UK to return criminals and unsuccessful asylum seekers. But The Sunday Telegraph revealed earlier this year that Albanian criminals deported from the UK for drug offences and violence are sneaking back into Britain.

Ismalaj was first made the subject of a deportation order in December 2012, after being convicted at the age of 20 for “producing a controlled substance”. He was deported to Albania in January 2013, but documents show he returned to the UK in breach of that order in October 2016, remaining long enough to embark on a relationship with a British woman, named in the court only as P.

Ismalaj left for Albania in July 2018, but returned to the UK once again in January 2019, before the birth of his British son in August that year. Ismalaj married P in August 2021. His wife, 32, runs a luxury events business in Nottinghamshire. When Ismalaj, who holds a significant stake in the firm, registered his interest with Companies House in December 2021, he wrongly described his nationality as British.

In November 2019 he applied to the Home Office for leave to remain on human rights grounds, claiming deportation would be in breach of his right to a family life with P, his son, and his two stepchildren, a boy and a girl.

P, who travelled to Albania with her three children earlier this month, told The Telegraph: “Blerim is my husband. We have a child together. He has not got a visa to stay here, so he cannot work. It was in process, but has been refused. “A deportation is news to us.” Court documents show the Home Office “accepted that the appellant has a genuine and subsisting family life with his British family”, but refused to revoke the deportation order. The immigration courts have now ruled against Ismalaj’s appeals, following a legal battle costing tens of thousands of pounds.

Judge Gaenor Bruce, of the Upper Tribunal, ruled: “This appeal is entirely misconceived. It was not unduly harsh for any of the appellant’s children that he be deported, and there were very weighty factors going the other way, which quite legitimately included the fact that the appellant has shown a blatant disregard for immigration control.”

Judge Bruce agreed with the lower tier immigration tribunal that there were no “very compelling circumstances” to outweigh the “strong public interest in the deportation of foreign criminals” and that the “harshness which the deportation will cause for the children” was not of “a sufficiently elevated degree to outweigh that public interest”.

A Home Office spokesman said: “Those with no right to be in the UK, including dangerous foreign national offenders who flout our laws, should be in no doubt that we will do whatever is necessary to remove them.”

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2022-11-27T08:00:00.0000000Z

2022-11-27T08:00:00.0000000Z

https://dailytelegraph.pressreader.com/article/281883007352826

Daily Telegraph