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A Jamaican man who has lived more than half his life in the UK is facing deportation to his home country in one of the first cases since new anti-immigration measures were announced in last week\u2019s immigration bill.<\/p>\n
Mark Nelson, 46, came to the UK in 2000 and set up his own car mechanic business. He has five British children and a British partner. In 2017, he received a four-year prison sentence for growing cannabis plants, something he said he did after his business experienced financial problems. He has not committed any further offences.<\/p>\n
In 2022, he wrote an opinion piece for the Guardian 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.<\/p>\n
His removal was later cancelled and instead he was tagged and had to report weekly at a Home Office reporting centre. But last Thursday when Nelson went to report, he was arrested, detained and told that the government planned to deport him to Jamaica.<\/p>\n
Speaking from a detention centre near Heathrow airport, Nelson told the Guardian he was devastated about once again facing deportation and separation from his five children and his partner. \u201cI\u2019m in a hot and filthy cell on the induction wing. My mental health is so bad because of what the Home Office has done to me. For the first time in my life, I have taken antidepressant medication.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy family is so upset. My brother, who is 46, was crying on the phone when he heard I had been detained. I haven\u2019t been able to sleep a wink since they brought me here. I was in such a state of shock when they arrested me,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat the Home Office don\u2019t think about when they try to deport someone like me is the impact it has not only on the person but on so many other people around them. I love my kids so much, and I can\u2019t bear to think of them being without their dad. I try to be a good role model for them. I talk to them about my crime to try to ensure they don\u2019t make the same mistake I made.\u201d<\/p>\n
His partner, Rachel Derbyshire, said that all of Nelson\u2019s family were distraught about his detention and threatened deportation. \u201cIt seems that the Home Office is not going to let this go. Mark\u2019s mental health is really bad because of this. He\u2019s a really lovely guy, but the Home Office is treating him as if he was a rapist or a murderer.\u201d<\/p>\n
The new immigration bill lays out a harsher test for the family and private life test known as article 8 in deportation cases.<\/p>\n
skip past newsletter promotionFree newsletter | Every weekday<\/p>\n
Sign up to First Edition<\/span><\/p>\n Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what\u2019s happening and why it matters<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Although exceptional circumstances are taken into consideration \u2013 such as the extent to which a person is socially and culturally integrated in the UK, whether there would be significant obstacles to integration into their country of birth and whether the effect of the person\u2019s deportation on family members would be unduly harsh \u2013 it appears that the government wants to proceed with Nelson\u2019s deportation despite the length of time he has lived in the UK and his strong family ties.<\/p>\n The Home Office has been approached for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A Jamaican man who has lived more than half his life in the UK is facing deportation to his home country in one of the first cases since new anti-immigration measures were announced in last week\u2019s immigration bill. Mark Nelson, 46, came to the UK in 2000 and set up his own car mechanic business.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50930,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[2917,4280,4986,2081,8963,12131,1541,637],"class_list":{"0":"post-50929","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-asylum","9":"tag-deportation","10":"tag-facing","11":"tag-immigration","12":"tag-jamaican","13":"tag-lived","14":"tag-man","15":"tag-years"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50929\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/50930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}