Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan has defended the State’s handling of the deportation of 35 people to Nigeria on Wednesday, saying those removed had previously been asked to leave voluntarily.
Speaking on Sunday, the Minister said: “Each person who was on the aeroplane that went back to Nigeria had their own individual narratives of persecution assessed by the International Protection Office, and on appeal, and subsequently they got a deportation order that wasn’t responded to.
“They were requested to leave voluntarily and that didn’t happen,” he told RTÉ Radio 1’s This Week programme.
The Garda National Immigration Bureau carried out the operation, which involved 21 men, nine women and five children, who were deported on a chartered flight from Dublin Airport to Lagos, Nigeria on Wednesday night. The children involved were deported as part of family groups.
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Friends of the families deported, who were living with them at an International Protection Accommodation Services (Ipas) centre in west Dublin, described the scenes last week as upsetting and “traumatising”.
Farhiya Ali, a mother living with her four children in the centre, said: “The kids were coming down for breakfast when these five men wearing cargo pants, big jackets arrived.
“They came into the third floor, stood in front of the bedroom door, took the three kids back in and told them to pack up. We heard them say: ‘You are going to be deported.’ As soon as the other children heard then they were all crying. It was such a horrific scene.”
Three siblings from one family were among those deported. They had lived at their accommodation since January 2022 with their mother and father.
Asked about the criticism from families at the Ipas centre about the manner of the deportation of children, Mr O’Callaghan said: “This is not a pleasant part of my job. I don’t relish doing this, but it has to be done. If we have an immigration system or an asylum system that doesn’t have a consequence for people who are ruled not to be entitled to stay here then the system becomes meaningless.”
Asked whether he would put Nigeria on Ireland’s safe list of countries, Mr O’Callaghan said: “There’s a difference here between putting a country on the safe list for the purposes of international protection under the [International Protection] Act, and determining whether or not to send somebody back to a country from whence they came.”
Applicants from designated safe countries of origin receive their interview date on the day they apply for international protection, reducing their waiting time for an interview.
“There’s faster time frames for Nigeria at present anyway because of the heightened number of people from Nigeria claiming asylum in Ireland,” said the Minister. “It doesn’t mean if you’re not on the safe list of countries from international protection, we can’t send you back to the country where you came from.”
