EU citizens will be deported for minor offences under Priti Patel’s post-Brexit immigration crackdown, lawyer warns

Alarm that long-standing UK residents will be ‘separated from their children and families, returned to countries they barely know’

EU citizens will be deported for minor offences under Priti Patel’s post-Brexit immigration crackdown, despite having permission to stay, a leading lawyer has warned.

Rules that allow foreign offenders to be expelled only if they represent a threat to the UK will be beefed up to target persistent pickpockets and shoplifters, from January.

Crucially, the home secretary announced the change would apply to the 3 million-plus EU citizens in the UK in the process of being awarded settled status, which supposedly guarantees their right to stay.

Colin Yeo, an immigration barrister, warned the crackdown was “a major change” from the current law that requires “a proportionality assessment and a current threat from the person facing deportation”.

“The Home Office was already targeting EU citizens and deporting more of them by bending and sometimes breaking EU law,” he told The Independent.

“But I’d expect the number of EU citizens to be deported to increase substantially from January 2021 onwards.

“This will include even EU citizens born in the UK – or brought here as small children – if they have not acquired British citizenship, for example because their parents cannot prove they were settled at the time of their birth.”

The3million group, representing EU nationals, said the policy showed Ms Patel had failed to learn from the review into the Windrush scandal, despite having agreed to implement its recommendations.

“EU citizens will, from January 2021, become part of the existing hostile regime that has seen fathers separated from their children and families, returned to countries they barely know,” said co-founder Maike Bohn.

“The home secretary promised that she will implement the recommendations of the Windrush review. There has been no evidence of this.”

The fresh threat revives criticism of Brandon Lewis, the then-immigration minister, when he warned deportation could go ahead before EU citizens could challenge a ruling that they had no right to stay.

This policy was revealed in post-Brexit immigration plans, which will toughen the requirement that “those already in the UK who are sentenced to 12 months or more in prison must be considered for deportation”.

“Where the 12-month criminality deportation threshold is not met, a foreign criminal will still be considered for deportation where it is conducive to the public good, including where they have serious or persistent criminality,” the Home Office document states.

And it adds: “For EU citizens who are protected by the withdrawal agreement or the UK’s domestic implementation of the withdrawal agreements, the tougher UK criminality thresholds will apply to conduct committed after the end of the transition period.”

The Home Office said Brexit should mean “a robust and consistent approach to applying the UK criminality thresholds rules”, treating EU citizens in the same way as arrivals from elsewhere.