More than a dozen people are understood to have been removed from a deportation flight to Jamaica on Wednesday, with campaigners’ fight to remove remaining passengers set to go to the wire.
Of 24 detainees in touch with campaign group Movement for Justice, 15 have had their removals deferred after legal challenges, with nine still having active removal directions.
The last deportation flight to Jamaica, in November, left with just four passengers – despite around 50 people originally being detained.
Figures obtained by The Big Issue revealed that one in six of the Home Office’s deportation charter flights in 2021 left with fewer than 10 passengers.
Karen Doyle, an organiser with Movement for Justice, said she expected the number of people taken off Wednesday’s flight to increase in the hours before take-off.
“These mass deportation flights are fundamentally unjust, they devastate families & terrorise communities,” Doyle told The Big Issue.