A Jamaican man who has lived more than half his life in the UK and was facing imminent deportation has been allowed to reunite with his British family after a legal challenge. Mark Nelson, 47, came to the UK in 2000 and later set up his own car-mechanic business. He has five British children and a British partner. He faced deportation in 2022 after serving a four-year prison sentence for possession with intent to supply a class B drug, abstracting electricity and two offences of racially aggravated intentional harassment. He had not committed any further offences. The deportation was later cancelled and instead he was tagged and told to report weekly at a Home Office centre. But last month – almost 10 years after his original conviction – Nelson was arrested, detained and told that the government again planned to deport him to Jamaica. The Home Office gave him a ticket for a flight on 7 August, but after reading about his case in the Guardian, lawyers offered to represent him pro bono to challenge his deportation. After they made an 11th-hour application for a judicial review the Home Office backed down on the deportation and cancelled his ticket. This week he was granted bail and can return to the home he shares with his partner, Rachel Derbyshire, in the north of England and see his children again. Nelson said he was overjoyed to to have left the immigration detention centre near Heathrow where he had spent several weeks in hot and crowded conditions. “I’ve spoken to my kids, my partner and my brother,” he said. “Everyone is so excited about my release. If it hadn’t been for the lawyers who got in touch after reading the Guardian article I would be back in Jamaica by now, separated from my family, not knowing when I would see them again. “I have no family members there and believe my life would be at risk.” Naga Kandiah of MTC Solicitors, who contacted Nelson after reading about his case, lodged the judicial review application. He has also lodged an appeal relating to his immigration case in the first-tier tribunal and a referral has been made for him to the national referral mechanism as a potential victim of modern slavery. Kandiah said: “He committed his offences in 2017 and served his sentence. Yet nearly a decade later he continues to endure the threat of deportation, with the devastating possibility that he could be permanently torn away from his British children and partner. A prison sentence should not become a life sentence by another name. “Vulnerable people can struggle to secure legal representation when they need it most. When a person facing removal cannot access timely legal advice, the risk is that the Home Office can remove them before their case has been properly scrutinised.” Nelson wrote an opinion piece for the Guardian in 2022 about being under threat of deportation. He said Jamaica was a place where he no longer knew anyone after his great-grandparents, who brought him up there, died when he was 16. A Home Office spokesperson said: “All foreign national offenders who receive a prison sentence in the UK are referred for deportation at the earliest opportunity. “We have removed or deported almost 70,000 people who were here illegally since the last election, an increase of 41%.”
