Farcical causes overseas criminals cannot be deported, from fraudster who says his spouse cannot get IVF in Nigeria, to rapist who claims to be bisexual

A fraudster jailed after an elaborate passport and benefits scam escaped deportation because he complained that his wife would be unable to get IVF in his native Nigeria.

Home Office officials tried to remove Olutobi Ogunbawo at the end of his three-year jail term – but he is still in the UK after a judge ruled his deportation would be ‘unduly harsh’ and a breach of human rights.

The astonishing case is the latest farcical example of how criminals exploit human rights law to run rings around Britain’s broken asylum system.

A year ago this newspaper revealed how gang rapist Yaqub Ahmed delayed his deportation to Somalia for five years after launching a relentless cycle of dubious appeals that was only broken after ministers offered him a 14-week stay in a luxurious hotel and a personalised therapy package.

Last night Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick branded Ogunbawo’s case ‘disgraceful’ and lambasted ‘gullible’ immigration judges. ‘These feral criminals must be laughing at how naive we are. Time and again cases like these are exposed. It seems the madness only gets worse.

‘In our twisted system it seems you could make up anything and gullible immigration judges will believe you.’

In the latest string of shocking cases that expose the difficulty in deporting criminals, The Mail on Sunday can reveal:

• A Jamaican rapist who cannot be removed from the country because he claims he is bisexual – despite only appearing to have dated women;

• A Polish drug dealer jailed after slashing a teenager with a knife who is allowed to stay after it was deemed the risk he poses to the public has reduced;

• A county lines drug dealer from Jamaica with 23 convictions who dodged deportation because of his right to a family life.

The Home Secretary has a legal duty to deport foreign criminals who have been jailed for at least 12 months. But many removals are either torpedoed or delayed for years by human rights claims. Around 4,100 foreign criminals were removed in the year ending March 2024 – compared to 6,628 in the year ending March 2017.

Shocking figures released last week revealed how foreign criminals who avoided deportation committed 10,000 offences in a single year.

Ministry of Justice data for the year to March 2022 showed that a quarter of foreign criminals went on to reoffend in the UK after being released from jail and remaining in the country.

Meanwhile, separate figures this month revealed how net migration to Britain hit 2.2 million over the past three years – despite pledges by successive governments to bring the numbers down.

Ogunbawo, 43, was sentenced to three years imprisonment in 2019 after plotting with his then partner, Maria Adesanya, both Nigerian nationals, to pay a British citizen £3,000 to falsely register himself as the father of their child.

The pair believed the scam would enable both mother and child to dishonestly claim a right to live in the UK. The British citizen, a nurse named Adekunle Adeparusi, later fraudulently pocketed £13,000 in tax credits by falsely claiming to be the primary carer of the child.

Ogunbawo entered the UK in December 2015 but overstayed his visa, with text messages showing he never intended to return to Nigeria. In October 2020 he was served with a deportation order but in January 2023 Judge Michael Malone, who sits in the First Tier immigration tribunal, blocked his removal to Nigeria on human rights grounds.

Ogunbawo had by then split from Adesanya and married an unnamed British woman. Legal documents show Judge Malone accepted evidence from Ogunbawo’s wife that there was no IVF treatment available in Nigeria and ruled that her husband’s deportation would therefore be ‘unduly harsh’.

The Home Office, however, claimed that ‘even the most basic Google search reveals the existence of IVF treatment in Nigeria’.

Experts say an estimated 2,500 babies are born in Nigeria each year via fertility treatments, including IVF, with services so affordable that an influx of ‘medical tourists’ travel there each year, including from the UK.

Last month the Upper Tribunal, which examines asylum and deportation appeals, overturned Judge Malone’s ruling and found he ‘erred in finding that IVF treatment in Nigeria is unavailable based solely upon the appellant’s wife’s oral evidence’.

Speaking to the MoS, Jimi Babarinde, Ogunbawo’s legal representative, claimed Judge Malone’s ruling did not reflect the argument he made at the tribunal that the woman would find it difficult to access IVF in Nigeria because of ‘medical issues’.

Ogunbawo, who is still living in Britain, will now have his case heard again by a different judge at the First Tier Tribunal – four years after the Home Office first launched deportation proceedings.

Sam Bidwell, a researcher at the Adam Smith Institute, said the public would be ‘completely outraged’ by such cases, adding: ‘It beggars belief, some of the cases that get through the system.

‘The system puts completely at its core the people we are talking about deporting and there is very little consideration of the will of the broader public and the safety of the broader public – it focuses entirely on these individuals.

‘Parliament must now legislate to take immigration and asylum decisions out of tribunal review. Ministers must have the power to control our borders.’

Official figures obtained by the MoS reveal how the number of asylum appeals has increased threefold in a year, as judges cope with a blizzard of claims. As of March 2024, the number of appeals in the First Tier Tribunal stood at 27,133, compared with 7,510 in March 2023.

In a report that went largely unnoticed last month, the Senior President of Tribunals warned that the caseload is expected to ‘significantly increase’ further.

In another case, a Jamaican rapist who was jailed for seven years in 2018 has been allowed to stay after his lawyers argued he would be at risk in Jamaica because he claimed he was bisexual.

The man, known only as ‘AA’ because of a draconian anonymity order, forced himself on a sleeping woman at a party after smoking cannabis and drinking.

The man claimed he was abused by an older man when he was a teenager in Jamaica and then had a ‘brief’ relationship with a man in the UK. The Home Office, however, said there was only evidence of relationships with women since his arrival here 23 years ago.

Nevertheless, the judge accepted ‘on the low standard of proof’ that he was likely to have been bisexual. She ruled he was at risk if he was deported to Jamaica after he claimed to have been attacked there by a gang because of his perceived sexuality. Two upper tribunal judges have upheld that ruling.

The MoS can also reveal how Polish drug dealer Mikolaj Porazewski, 26, has avoided deportation, despite being jailed in 2018 for more than four years for conspiracy to supply Class A drugs and slashing a 15-year-old boy with a Stanley knife.

After his release from jail, probation officers concluded that he remained ‘a medium risk of serious harm to the public.’ But immigration judge Lucy Corrin said he had demonstrated ‘remorse and awareness of the seriousness of his offending’ and ‘has made a determined effort to rehabilitate’.

She concluded that Porazewski poses an ‘ever-reducing risk, which is being safely managed in the community’. The Upper Tribunal last month dismissed a Home Office appeal against her ruling.

And in yet another controversial case, the Home Office has been blocked from deporting prolific Jamaican criminal Shavon Lamar Walker, 24, who was jailed for three-and-a-half years in 2021 for conspiracy to supply cocaine.

A court heard how Walker was part of a London gang that ‘exploited’ two 15-year-old boys to sell heroin and crack cocaine in Hull as part of a major county lines drugs operation. Walker had already racked up 23 convictions, including joyriding, shoplifting and three counts of assaulting a police officer during a four-year crimewave.

Upper Tribunal Judge Gemma Loughran last month ruled that Walker, who lives with his mother, grandmother and 14-year-old sister, is ‘socially and culturally integrated’ in the UK and upheld his appeal against deportation.

‘I place particular weight on the appellant’s very young age when he arrived in the UK, his length of residence, very close relationships to his family members and the impact his deportation would have on those family members,’ Judge Loughran said.

The Home Office said: ‘It is longstanding government policy that we do not comment on individual cases.’

Additional reporting by Isaac Crowson, Cameron Charters and Bill Bowkett