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Email Subject: Stop the charter flight to Jamaica on 2 December 2020

Dear [Member of Parliament],

I am writing as a constituent to ask that you urgently oppose the removal charter flight due to deport up to 50 people to Jamaica on 2 December 2020. Mass deportation flights are a violation of basic human rights; the Home Office cannot continue to use them as a tool against UK residents, particularly when the recommendations made by the Windrush Lessons Learned report have still not been implemented in full – nine months on from publication.

Those targeted for deportation at Colnbrook immigration removal centre are reportedly being prevented from accessing key resources like the computer room, due to Covid-19 precautions. This has left detainees unable to reach legal representatives, their families and other forms of vital support. One potential deportee reportedly had to wait four days until guards faxed urgent paperwork to his lawyer. Obstacles like this are a blatant violation of an individual’s right to access justice and deportation flights must be halted until there is satisfactory evidence these blocks have been removed. We cannot face repeating the mistakes of Windrush again.

Whatsmore, these deportations place predominantly Black individuals at risk of contracting Covid-19 when research already shows that this is a group who are particularly vulnerable to the virus. The conditions of deportation – in which detainees are shackled to ushers for long journeys, then two guards while on the flight itself – means up to 200 people could be crammed into one small space. Airports and air travel are already known to accelerate the spread of the virus. To allow these deportations to proceed under these circumstances is to knowingly be infecting high-risk people with a deadly virus. As a representative of the British people, I ask you to oppose this in the strongest possible terms.

On a human level, I also plead with you to challenge the morality of these deportations. It is almost Christmas, at the end of one of the hardest years of the last two decades. Communities have been devastated by the pandemic, families already bereaved and destitute. Black British people are known to have been particularly affected.

Now the Home Office proposes ripping parents away from their children, on a flimsy premise. Contrary to the claims that the proposed deportees are serious criminals, as has been asserted in previous cases, many only carry single offences, made during their youth. Others were the victims of county lines operations, or have been criminalised in association. Some are currently in the process of appealing convictions – to deport them would be making a mockery of the human rights we espouse as a country.

In the words of writer Jason Okundaye:

“The severity of one’s “criminal” history should not serve as a premise for deportation. Exiling “criminals” does nothing to resolve and prevent the social ills endemic in British society, and [...] functions to racially other those ‘undesirable’ criminals who can be determined as ‘not British enough’. Deportations on the basis of criminality often have little to do with justice or protection for victims, but unchallenged obedience to state doctrine and a commitment to standards of behaviour under the threat of exile which do not exist for white British citizens”.

Deportation kills. Flights were paused for a reason. They cannot now be resumed, in the midst of a pandemic, just before Christmas. There must be a serious review of methods and it must start with stopping this flight on 2 December. We have not forgotten what was done to the Windrush generation and what is still being done to their descendants.

As your constituent,  I urge you to immediately write to the Home Secretary calling for the cancellation of the 2 December flight and to call for an end to charter mass flight deportations. This year, the UK pledged to start dismantling the racist structures that disproportionately harm its Black British residents. Please be a voice on the right side of history by helping end this one.

Regards,

[Your Name]

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