THE Home Office is seeking to deport two vulnerable women to Jamaica next week despite neither of them having committed a criminal offence, campaigners have claimed. 

The move indicates a change in the government’s approach to deportations to the Caribbean island, with charter flights in recent years exclusively targeting Jamaicans with criminal convictions. 

The women, who are being held at Yarl’s Wood, are facing removal on a flight next Wednesday after they were recently refused further leave to remain. Both are said to have lived in Britain for over seven years and have close relatives in the country. One is said to be on suicide watch in detention. 

Their local MP, Bell Ribeiro-Addy, is calling for the flight to be halted, claiming that if it goes ahead, it will be the first of its kind since the Windrush scandal. 

“What we’re seeing is exactly the same deport-first-ask-questions later approach that led to so much suffering in the Windrush scandal,” the Streatham MP said. 

 “The government shouldn’t be tearing apart vulnerable families dealing with difficult personal circumstances – especially not while we have an ongoing pandemic.” 

The Windrush scandal, which broke in 2018, saw British citizens wrongly detained, deported and denied rights due to the government’s hostile environment policies. The two women are thought to be the first Jamaicans to be targeted for removal solely due to immigration issues since the scandal. 

Wednesday’s flight also seeks to remove men with past convictions, many of whom have lived in Britain since childhood, according to campaign group Movement for Justice.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “Those with no right to be in the UK and foreign national offenders should be in no doubt that we will do whatever is necessary to remove them.” 

It added that “extensive checks” have taken place to ensure that no British citizens or anyone eligible for the Windrush scheme are facing removal.