Eleventh-Hour Bid To Halt Student Deportation

Lawyers have lodged papers to try and get an emergency injunction to block the deportation of Mauritian student Yashika Bageerathi.

The 19-year-old is due to be removed at 9pm, but her legal team want more time to take her case to the Court of Appeal.

She is being driven from Yarl's Wood immigration centre in Bedfordshire to Heathrow airport for an Air Mauritius flight.

A spokesman for Miss Bageerathi's school, Oasis Academy Hadley, in Enfield, north London said she was "very distressed and worried".

The school spokesman said: "She is on her way in the van but I really hope we can keep her here.

"We're encouraging everyone to tweet Air Mauritius and to phone them to stop this."

Ms Bageerathi has already received two last-minute reprieves from deportation after airlines apparently refused to fly her home.

The campaign to keep her in the UK has drawn more than 175,000 signatures to an e-petition in support of the promising maths student who is due to sit A-level exams.

Campaigners are angry that the 19-year-old is being separated from her mother, who is facing deportation at a later date.

Both their asylum cases - claiming they are fleeing a violent relative - have failed.

James Brokenshire, the immigration minister, told MPs he would intervene only in "exceptional" cases - and this one did not fall into that category.

He told MPs that 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.