ECHR Enables Illegal Migrant to Remain in UK

A case revealed in court documents seen by the Daily Telegraph shows how a deported Albanian criminal was able to sneak back into the UK and exploit the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) right to a family life to block being deported again.

Ardit Binaj, a thirty-two-year-old Albanian, entered the UK illegally in a lorry in 2014. He was arrested for burglary in 2015. In 2016, Binaj received a thirty-month jail sentence for the break-in, plus six months for another burglary and eighteen weeks for a separate theft.

He was freed six months into his sentence and deported to Albania as part of a prisoner transfer agreement. Five months later, he re-entered the UK in January 2017, in breach of the deportation order to be with his Lithuanian girlfriend, Diana Bolgova. She had leave to remain in the UK under the government’s EU settlement scheme.

Abuse of EU Settlement Scheme

Binaj waited until their son was born in September 2020 and applied for the right to stay in the UK under the EU settlement scheme. Binaj and Bolgova married one month later. His application to stay was rejected and the Home Office began proceedings to deport him. Binaj then claimed that deportation would breach his rights to family life under Article Eight of the ECHR. His lawyers claimed that his wife was suffering from severe anxiety and depression.

In March 2024, a judge accepted that it would be ‘unduly harsh’ for the mother and son to be separated from Binaj and that she might be unable to get appropriate medical treatment in Albania if she went to live with Binaj there.

The Right to Family Life trumps Rights of Tax Payers

The Conservative Home Secretary, James Cleverly, challenged the ruling because it was not ‘unduly harsh’ to return Binaj to Albania and that there was a strong public interest in deporting a convicted criminal. The judge’s ruling was upheld by an upper immigration tribunal.

This is not the first time that a convicted criminal has exploited the ECHR to block deportation. The UK was unable to deport Learco Chindamo to Italy even though he had murdered headteacher Philip Lawrence.

Theresa May claims that when she was a Conservative Home Secretary Article Eight’s meaning had been perverted by the courts citing the case of an illegal immigrant who could not be removed because he had a pet cat.

As we all know, the big problem is the ECHR. Britain will not be able to reclaim proper sovereignty and control over its borders while we remain committed to the ECHR.

Starmer will NEVER Leave the ECHR

At a European Political Community gathering in Blenheim, Oxfordshire, on 18 July 2024, newly-elected Labour Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, vowed that his government would ‘never’ leave the ECHR as he seeks a reset in relations with Europe.

The four contenders for the leadership of the Conservative Party have spent much time discussing the ECHR. Robert Jenrick has promised to take the UK out of the ECHR. Tom Tugendhat has said that he would be prepared to leave the ECHR. Whatever that means! Kemi Badenoch has said that she would not rule out leaving the ECHR. Whatever that means! The current front-runner, James Cleverly, is not in favour of leaving the ECHR. Above all, even if the Conservatives did eventually decide to leave the ECHR, they’re probably not capable of doing so. After all, if they were, they had fourteen years in government to do so.

Thankfully, there is no need for despair.

In the first one-hundred days, a Reform government would leave the ECHR and commence reform of the Human Rights Act ‘so that it puts the rights of law-abiding people first’.