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Legal Bid To Block Student Deportation Fails

Legal Bid To Block Student Deportation Fails

A last-minute legal move to block the deportation of Mauritian student Yashika Bageerathi has failed.

A judge at London's Law Courts refused to grant an emergency injunction to halt her removal, in order to give her legal team more time to take her case to the Court of Appeal.

The eleventh-hour application was made as the 19-year-old was being driven to Heathrow airport.

She is due to to be flown out on an Air Mauritius flight at 9pm.

Appeal judge Lord Justice Richards refused to order a stay in a telephone hearing this evening.

Such orders are granted only if a judge decides the case raises issues which are arguable and merit a further hearing.

A spokesman for the teenager's school, Oasis Academy Hadley, in Enfield, north London, said they were extremely disappointed at the judge's decision.

He said: "We thought there was a solid legal case for her to stay while she finished her A-levels.

"It's worrying the legal system doesn't reflect the heart of the people of this country.

"But the plane hasn't taken off yet. This isn't over until it's over. We now ask Air Mauritius not to take Yashika on the plane."

Her MP David Burrowes said he was "deeply disappointed" by the deportation order.

The A-level student has been held at Yarl's Wood immigration detention centre in Bedfordshire since March 19.

A campaign against her deportation has attracted around 175,000 signatures to an online petition.

She has already had two late reprieves from deportation after airlines apparently refused to fly her home.

Immigration Minister James Brokenshire told MPs he would intervene only in "exceptional" cases, and this did not fall into that category.

He said her case had been through the proper legal process and resulted in a Home Office decision that she does not need protection from violence or persecution.

Miss Bageerathi came to the UK with her mother, sister and brother in 2011 to escape a relative who was physically abusive and claimed asylum last summer.

She was due to take her A-level exams next month.