Could Northern Ireland become a migrant sanctuary?

Yesterday, the High Court in Belfast dealt a blow to the government when it struck down several provisions in the Illegal Migration Act 2023, and declared that parts of the legislation were incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.

The Illegal Migration Act is a key piece of legislation for the government’s Rwanda scheme. It obliges the Home Secretary to detain and remove individuals arriving in the UK without permission and prevents them from claiming asylum. The Act also allows the government to deport illegal migrants to a safe third country. While yesterday’s ruling only applies to individuals in Northern Ireland, there are concerns that it could affect the viability of the government’s Rwanda scheme as a whole.

The ruling came after applications by the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission and a 16-year-old asylum seeker from Iran, who had arrived in the UK after travelling from France in a small boat. The applicants argued that the provisions of the Act were both incompatible with Article 2 of the Ireland/Northern Ireland Protocol to the Withdrawal Agreement (commonly referred to as the Windsor Framework) and various provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights.