Albanian criminal allowed to stay in Britain – after four illegal entries

Telegraph

19-03-2025

A convicted Albanian criminal who was expelled three times after trying to enter the UK illegally has been allowed to live in Britain after sneaking back in on a fourth attempt.
An immigration judge ruled that Erind Koka, 33, should not be deported, because he had been jailed for less than a year for helping to cultivate cannabis.
Despite an appeal by Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, who argued that his presence in the UK was 'not conducive to the public good', Koka's right to remain was upheld because he fell below the criminality threshold of having been jailed for at least 12 months.
The case, disclosed in court papers, is the latest example exposed by The Telegraph of migrants or convicted foreign criminals winning the right to remain in the UK or halt their deportations.
There are a record 41,987 outstanding immigration appeals, largely on human rights grounds, which threaten to hamper Labour's efforts to fast-track removal of illegal migrants.
The backlog has risen by nearly a quarter since September and is up nearly 500 per cent from just 7,173 at the start of 2022.
Koka first attempted to enter the UK by arriving on a passenger plane with false documents. He was refused entry and deported to Finland.
Just seven months later he was found without documentation hidden in a trailer by Border Agency staff at Dunkirk when he had again been attempting to illegally enter the UK.
He was removed the following day to France but five years later, in September 2018, he was discovered in a camper-van in Coquelles by the French authorities and removed from the border point, which was UK territory under an agreement with France.
He eventually managed to get into the UK illegally, hidden in a lorry on Oct 3 2019, according to his own testimony. Within a year he had been convicted of producing a class B controlled drug, cannabis, for which he was jailed for eight months.
On Feb 4 2022, the Home Office decided to deport him on the basis that his presence in the UK was 'not conducive' to the public good.
Although Suella Braverman, the home secretary at the time, recognised that Mr Koka's prison sentence fell below the threshold for deportation, she said his offending had caused serious harm.
Koka responded by initially seeking refugee status, but withdrew that attempt and instead claimed the right to stay on the basis that deportation would breach his rights to a family life under article eight of the European Convention on Human Rights. He had a daughter and partner in the UK, the court was told.
Kyriacoulla Degirmenci, the judge at his initial lower-tier immigration tribunal only considered whether he met the criteria for deportation.
As he had pleaded guilty and his involvement was said to be no more than watering cannabis plants on one occasion, the judge determined it 'fell significantly short of ... serious harm'.
'By that finding Judge Degirmenci found as a matter of law that Mr Koka did not fall within the definition of foreign criminal,' a court was later told.
Lesley Smith and David Zucker, upper tribunal immigration judges, decided that there had been no error in law in Judge Degirmenci's decision as she had considered solely the issue of whether his criminality was serious enough for him to have been deported.
'No other matters of significance were put in issue. Had the judge gone on to consider matters not put in issue by the Secretary of State, criticism of the judge [might] well have been justified,' they said.
'We take this opportunity to remind parties that they and judges alike are now encouraged to narrow the issues as best they can...
'This not only results in the need for shorter decisions by judges, which is now also encouraged but is plainly in the interests of justice and efficiency.
'The appeal of the Secretary of State to the upper tribunal is dismissed on all grounds. The decision of first-tier tribunal Judge Degirmenci does not contain an error of law.
'The decision of the first-tier tribunal is upheld with the consequence that Mr Koka's appeal remains allowed.'