Home Office questions suspect on Birmingham New Street Station

The Home Office deploys on a regular basis officials to mooch around railway stations and question people who look suspicious. 

This is what happened on 11 January 2024 at Birmingham New Street station which, as you may know, is the largest and busiest in Birmingham. Mr Mamun Ahmed, a Bangladeshi national, was there, and apparently he looked nervous – well, who can blame him?

He was detained and questioned, in the rather unusual setting of a seat within the station. There were naturally hundreds and hundreds of people moving around and passing through and it must have been a noisy and distracting environment. 

As a result of this interview, it was determined by the Home Office that Mr Ahmed held leave as a Skilled Worker careworker but that he had not started the job and that he had been working illegally at his uncle’s restaurant. As a result of this his leave was cancelled and he was detained for several days. 

Mr Ahmed thought that he had not been treated fairly or correctly, and he applied successfully to the High Court for Judicial Review. As you might well imagine, an important aspect of the case was whether the interview had been carried out appropriately. 

Mr Ahmed disputed the account of the interview presented by the Home Office, and another issue was that it was not entirely clear that he had been in breach of immigration conditions. 

At the court hearing the judge was not persuaded that he had been in breach of conditions and he was most definitely persuaded – and relying extensively on published Home Office guidance – that the interview setting had not been appropriate. 

As he (His Honour Judge Simon) put it:

“To conduct questioning of the centrality and importance to the Claimant’s immediate and long-term future without any regard to the physical surroundings and their impact on the process created, in my judgment, procedural unfairness.”

“Following his early administrative arrest, the Claimant could have been moved to a quiet, less public and more conducive setting with ease.”

So Mr Ahmed was victorious and the decision to cancel his leave was quashed, and no doubt he might seek financial compensation for the wrongful detention.

His Honour also reminded us that:

“    there is nothing intrinsically unlawful or unfair about such planned [Home Office enforcement] operations. Nevertheless, there is scope in such operations, as in any comparable situation, for procedural unfairness to vitiate the process”.

This is something worth bearing in mind. 

Oliver Westmoreland

Senior Immigration Lawyer