A convicted fraudster can return to the UK after being deported to Ghana because being separated from his children caused depression, a judge has ruled.
In the latest case involving foreign offenders invoking human rights law, an immigration judge said that Samuel Frimpong had led a “depressive life” away from his family and that his children in Britain felt “socially isolated” because of his absence.
Frimpong was jailed for four months for using a faked document in an effort to circumvent the rules that allow foreigners to stay in the UK.
He was deported to Ghana, his home country, and a tribunal has now been told that his 11 and 15-year-old children, who were born after his initial conviction, find it “difficult to explain” where their father is living.
The tribunal was told that Frimpong was subject to a deportation order shortly after his conviction in 2008 and left the country in 2013.
He was granted permission to appeal against the deportation order at the time but he then “went to ground” and was listed as an absconder.
In 2022 an immigration officer told Frimpong, who the tribunal heard was a pastor, that his deportation order would not be revoked.
He appealed against that decision, but his claim was rejected last year.
Now Judge Abid Mahmood has ordered that the deportation order must be revoked on the grounds that it was an “unjustifiable interference” in Frimpong’s human rights.
The pastor had argued at the upper tier of the immigration tribunal that under provisions protecting the right to family life, the rights of his wife and children had been interfered with.
Frimpong’s wife, who was not named, told the tribunal that she and her children had been evicted after her husband’s deportation.
She said: “The children are somewhat socially isolated without their father and find it difficult to understand why their father is not with them and they find it difficult to explain to others at school and the like where their father is.”
The wife added that her children “keep begging their father to come to England and always pray for his safe return to have his attention, support and affection”.
She also told the tribunal that she was unable to work full-time while caring for the children and therefore the family could not afford to travel to Ghana.
Revoking the deportation order, the judge acknowledged that Frimpong’s dishonesty had been serious but he added that the family were living “depressive lives”.
The judge said it was clear that if the children were taken to Ghana, they would “leave their lives in the UK, their schools and their friends to live in a one-room home in poor conditions”.
Mahmood said that the church was important to the family and added: “Modern means of communication have been tried in this case and have failed, as shown by the depressive lives being lived by the children and their mother here in the UK. Additionally in light of the depressive life being lived by [Frimpong] in Ghana.”
He noted that Frimpong’s offence was in 2008, that there had been no record of reoffending and that he had “apologised profusely for his offending and behaviour”.
• Jawad Iqbal: Deportation case makes a mockery of human rights laws
In a recent case, a judge ruled that an Albanian, who was jailed for more than three years for running a cannabis factory should not be deported because it would deprive his daughter of a “male role model”.
Another judge quashed a deportation order relating to an Iraqi drug dealer on the grounds that he was too “westernised” to be able to live in the country of his birth.
In another case, a Polish drug dealer avoided deportation despite having an “unenviable list of convictions” because he claimed not to be able to speak his native language.
