Concern at 'covert' deportation of 65 immigrants

Refugee support groups and immigration lawyers have expressed concern at the "covert" and "cloak-and-dagger" manner in which 65 people, including young families, were deported on a specially chartered aircraft yesterday morning.

The 65 people - 53 Romanians and 12 Moldovans - were ejected from the State in the biggest single multiple deportation yet.

All failed asylum-seekers, they were accompanied on the flight by 35 gardaí, a doctor and interpreters. The flight left Dublin Airport at 7.50 a.m. bound first for Bucharest in Romania and then the Moldovan capital, Chisinau.

Gardaí were also in place in Bucharest and Chisinau to assist authorities there with the deportees' paperwork.

Among the deportees were "about 12 or 13" children including one baby, said Chief Supt Martin Donnellan of the Garda National Immigration Bureau.

They had been arrested from Wednesday morning on, at their homes in Athlone, Co Westmeath, Baltinglass, Co Wicklow, at the Mosney reception centre in Co Meath and in Dublin and held overnight in Cloverhill and Mountjoy Prisons before being taken to Dublin Airport early yesterday morning.

It is understood six further families secured High Court orders restraining their deportation, including one family where the mother was eight months pregnant and unable to fly.

Chief Supt Donnellan said all had been identified for deportation several weeks ago and had been served with papers at their last given addresses. "They would have been well aware this was going to happen," he said.

There was disagreement yesterday as to whether they had in fact been served with deportation papers in advance of being arrested. Ms Aisling Ryan, solicitor for one of the families, who secured restraining orders against deportation, said her clients had been at their current address for over a year.

"And the first they heard about a deportation order was six o'clock in the morning when the GNIB arrived asking them why they weren't ready to go and a van running outside ready to take them off."

Describing the "dawn-raid" style of arrests as "cloak-and-dagger", she said there were insufficient protections for the individual deportees.

"When deportation orders are served on the spot like that and some family member has to go running for a solicitor, it can be physically too late by the time paperwork is ready and a judge is found."

Potential deportees are supposed to get 15 working days following receipt of the deportation order to make submissions to the Minister for Justice for leave to remain, or seek a judicial review restraining the deportation.

Mr Peter O'Mahony, chief executive of the Irish Refugee Council, expressed concern at the use of specially chartered flights. These often took off in the middle of the night, meaning deportations were increasingly being effected "out of public view".