First Rwanda flight could leave on June 24

The first Rwanda deportation flight could take off as soon as June 24, court documents reveal.

The Government had originally suggested flights would start between July 1 and 15, as first reported by The Telegraph, but it has now advised a High Court judge that the “earliest possible date” will be the week beginning June 24.

The disclosure by the Government’s legal department was made in response to a legal challenge against the Rwanda policy by the First Division Association (FDA), which represents leading civil servants.

The union claims that it would be unlawful for civil servants to obey ministerial instructions to ignore rule 39 injunctions by the European Court of Human Rights, a power handed to ministers in Rishi Sunak’s Safety of Rwanda Act.

The FDA says that officials would be in breach of the civil service code if they were to flout international law by ignoring the injunctions.

Hundreds of migrants are being detained by immigration officers ahead of the first deportation flights. They will be held at immigration removal centres until they can be deported to Rwanda.

Those detained are among 5,700 migrants whose applications for asylum have been denied after they arrived in the UK illegally between January 2022 and June 2023. They were previously notified of their removal to Rwanda.

Officials are targeting 2,145 whom they believe give the best prospect of removal and have been subject to face-to-face reporting as part of their immigration bail conditions. The remaining 3,557 migrants are subject to reporting conditions including by email or phone.

The Rwanda scheme is central to the Prime Minister’s pledge to stop the boats and he is aiming for a regular “drumbeat” of flights to the east African state over the summer.

Previous plans suggested officials would aim for three flights a week, with around 50 migrants on each, overseen by 150 escorts at a ratio of three to one.

The migrants can be detained for the entire nine to 11 weeks before their scheduled flights provided there is a realistic prospect of removal from the UK in a “reasonable” timescale.

They will be able to seek bail but lawyers suggested James Cleverly, the Home Secretary, would have to provide a removal date at that point, to justify their detention within a “reasonable” timescale.

A key change to guidance issued to officials on Tuesday makes clear it is now for the Home Secretary to determine what a “reasonable” timescale is and also makes it easier to detain individuals who may be deemed vulnerable.

Lawyers believe they will be able to mount legal challenges to individual migrants’ deportation under the Safety of Rwanda Act even though the legislation was designed to restrict appeals.

Migrants can bring legal claims if they can provide “compelling evidence relating specifically to the person’s particular circumstances” that Rwanda is not a safe country for them individually.

Legal challenges will be based on articles two and three of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protect the right to life and guard against torture.