Foreign criminal who escaped deportation from UK is arrested on suspicion of rape
A FOREIGN criminal spared deportation from the UK after an 11th-hour public outcry has been arrested on suspicion of rape.
Damion Thompson, 45, is on police bail over the alleged sex attack, an immigration tribunal was told last month.
It rejected a government bid to kick Thompson out of the country, ruling that doing so would breach his human right to a family life.
He was among 90 criminals due to board a government chartered flight from Stansted to Jamaica in August 2021 after being jailed for two years for drugs offences in 2012.
It took off with just seven on board after protests outside the Jamaican embassy in London.
Some 51,000 people also signed a petition. A year earlier, then would-be Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer and other Labour MPs demanded the suspension of chartered deportation flights.
Several who the thugs who dodged the Jamaica flight, however, went on to commit further crimes. One was jailed for murder.
Thompson’s case had trundled on for a decade after he was handed his deportation papers in 2012.
He lived in Yorkshire with his wife and her daughter from a previous relationship while filing court appeals.
Judge Soraya Reeds ruled last month that deporting Thompson, who has lived in the UK for 20 years, would be “unduly harsh” on his wife, an NHS nurse.
She conceded her judgment ignored the rape probe, arguing that Thompson, may never be charged.
She stated: “Given the presumption that a person is ‘innocent until proven guilty’, I have disregarded the fact of this investigation.”
Alp Mehmet, chairman of Migration Watch UK, slammed the decision.
He said: “There are far too many barriers to deportation.
“People like Damion Thompson, who have engaged in serious crimes, should be removed as quickly as possible.
“It is time to revert to proper enforcement.”
Tory MP Nigel Mills said: “We changed the law years ago to make clear family ties that arise while someone is here illegally should not be relevant in these cases.”
He echoed the call for deportation cases to be dealt with faster and not “years after a conviction”.
The Home Office said it had removed 14,713 foreign national offenders between January 2019 and this March.
It said: “Foreign criminals should be deported from the UK wherever it is legal and practical to do so.”