An Albanian man who tried to enter Britain four times before he was imprisoned for the cannabis landing, avoided deportation after it was ruled that he did not meet the legal definition of a “foreign criminal.”
In October 2019, Koka, 33, entered the country unlawfully on a truck after seven years of trying to do this.
Within less than a year, in February 2020, he was convicted of involvement in the production of class B – 'The Watering, on an occasion of cannabis plants' – and sentenced to eight months in prison.
Two years later, it was decided, in February 2022, he would be deported because it was considered 'conducive to the public interest' because he was a 'foreign criminal' who had caused 'serious damage' with his insult.
But after Koka appealed in October 2023, it was ruled that he did not really count as a 'foreign criminal' – and so he was allowed to stay in the country, as reported by time. The home office appealed against this ruling, but it was maintained.
The judge said that he did not count as a 'foreign criminal' because under nationality, immigration and asylum act 2002, perpetrators must meet some of the three specific criteria that are labeled as such.
They must have received a prison sentence of at least 12 months, convicted of 'a crime that caused serious damage' – the basis of Koka's deportation, because his sentence was only eight months – whether a 'persistent perpetrator' was.
A first -class tribunal judge said that Koka's crime of an attack that can be said to have caused serious damage ', which means that he did not count as a' foreign criminal ' – and did not have to be deported.
In October 2019, Koka, 33, entered the country unlawfully on a truck after seven years of trying to do this. Shown: file photo
When the decision to deport Koka was first taken in February 2022, he stopped an international protection claim as a refugee – but this was withdrawn a year later, in February 2023.
He appealed his deportation in the field of human rights in October of that year and it was heard by a first Tier Tribunal in August 2024, where the judge ruled in his favor. The Upper Tribunal confirmed the decision after the home office appealed.
Koka first tried to come to the UK in October 2012 and used false documents to board a flight. He was excluded from arrival and removed to Finland.
Less than a year later, in May 2013, he was found by the staff of Border Agency and hid undocumented in a trailer in Dunkirk, France.
He was found by the French authorities, five years later, in 2018, in a 30 -mileage motorhome in the city of Coquelles, near Calais.
It was the following year that he then entered the UK illegally on a truck. He was arrested by the South Wales police in July 2020.
Koka's case is an example of a backlog of 74,969 deportation vocational issues that are currently completed by the courts of immigration and asylum reports.
Most cases include those who have not been granted asylum, attractive that rejection of their claims.
Ministers Plan, according to Times reports earlier this week, to amend the law to establish a deadline for all asylum professions to be heard within 24 weeks – half the current time needed to be heard in the first immigration and asylum tribunal courts.
But legal bosses have warned that this would not solve the real problem – a lack of available judges, which they say is often the cause of the ruling of Asylum vocational cases.
