TORY Home Secretary Theresa May embarrassingly lost two court battles with asylum-seekers in the space of a few days, it was revealed yesterday.

In one High Court case, a judge ruled that a 27-year-old Ethiopian man is entitled to damages because he had been unlawfully held in an immigration detention centre for seven weeks pending his deportation.

Mr Justice Kerr said Gadisa Ararso’s detention from September 16 to November 7 last year was initially lawful because there were “reasonable grounds” that his removal from Britain was imminent.

The detainee then announced the intention to lodge a legal challenge to Ms May’s decision to send him to Malta — the first European country he arrived in.

But, the Home Secretary’s lawyers said that he was locked up due to fear that he would abscond.

Mr Kerr continued to say that Home Office officials were “put on notice” that the decision to send him to Malta was “likely to be challenged.”

Lawyers representing Mr Ararso had requested his release, Mr Kerr said, and that there had been a “material change of circumstances” which should have led Ms May to “reconsider the position.”

However, he ruled that the Home Office was right to decide to deport him and dismissed a judicial review claim Mr Ararso made against that decision.

In the second case, Mr Justice Collins has ruled that a deported woman — who was not identified in court — can return to Britain to attend a hearing for her asylum claim.

Her country of origin was not named either.

Lawyers argued that the Home Office expected that the woman — who admitted conspiring to control prostitution — would too abscond.

She had challenged her deportation and an appeal was scheduled before a tribunal.

Mr Collins heard that it had not been possible for the woman to participate in the appeal through “electronic means” from the country she was deported to and, therefore, should return.