A Greek Cypriot man caught in a Home Office backlog of post-Brexit residency applications has been deported from Britain with three days’ notice, despite having a pending case review, the Guardian reported Friday.
Costas Koushiappis, 39, was escorted onto an aircraft in Edinburgh on Friday morning by Border Force officials. “I am here with the Border Force. They have all my documents. I can’t talk about how I feel because if I do will have a breakdown,” Koushiappis told The Guardian.
His employer at the motorbike franchise Two Wheels, Stuart West-Gray, called the situation a “disgrace”. “I spoke to him this morning. He said the Border Force officials who had escorted him were very good to him and told him he had conducted himself very well, had adhered to the bail conditions and they didn’t have to come look for him this morning”, West-Gray said.
“But why give someone three days to pack up their life? You would think they would at least give them 28 days so he could mount a legal case. When he was in the shop last night as we were closing, he said: ‘I’ve got to go round and say goodbye to everyone.’ He was in tears as he went round the shop floor. It was absolutely heartbreaking”.
Koushiappis arrived in Britain in 2017, pre-Brexit, but after an absence due to ill health and COVID-19 lockdowns, did not return until 2021. The Home Office rejected his application for pre-settled status on 28 October 2022. He subsequently requested an administrative review on 2 November 2022, and was recently informed the decision could take two years due to case backlogs.
Immigration lawyer Andrew Jordan from the charity Settled, who took up the case this week, told The Guardian that the Home Office of breaching the withdrawal agreement and said he would escalate the matter to the EU.
In correspondence with the Home Office’s vulnerable EU citizens team, Jordan argued that the removal order disregarded Koushiappis’s pending administrative review and ignored his exercise of European Economic Area treaty rights prior to Brexit.
(INCYPRUS Brexit: Greek Cypriot forcibly deported from UK | in-cyprus.com (philenews.com)
