Refugee council calls for halt to deportations

The deportation of asylum-seekers who are also the parents of Irish-born children should be halted until the legal situation in such circumstances is clarified, a spokesman for the Irish Refugee Council has said.

Mr James Stapleton, policy officer with the IRC, also said there was "growing panic" among the asylum-seeking parents of children born here that they could be deported. Anxiety has grown since the father of an Irish-born two- year-old was repatriated to Nigeria on Thursday morning.

"We are arguing very strongly, not so much for the rights of these asylum-seekers, but for the rights of their children," he said.

"Thursday was a bleak example of how the rights of Irish children whose parents are non-nationals seem to count for less than the rights of Irish children whose parents are also Irish."

On Thursday morning, Mr Alabi Ayinde was one of six failed asylum seekers taken from Mountjoy Prison and flown to Lagos, on a specially chartered plane. His wife, Ms Omo Ayinde, and young family have been granted leave to remain in Ireland. His 23-month-old daughter, Zainab, was born here and is an Irish citizen.

Ms Ayinde remained determined yesterday to follow her husband to Nigeria despite the fact that she is four months pregnant and in need of surgery.

She had heard nothing from her husband, she said, but went on to say that her sister had been at Lagos airport when the deportees arrived. "She told me they were taken to Kiri Kiri prison."

According to the British Home Office web site, in 1999 "at least one inmate died per day in the Kiri Kiri prison in Lagos".

The Department of Justice, the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Irish Embassy in Abuja, Nigeria were unable to say what happened to the six deportees once they were handed over to the Nigerian immigration police in Lagos. The Nigerian Department of Justice could not be contacted yesterday.

Judgment is due early next month in two High Court cases which will clarify the legal situation for the asylum seeking parents of Irish-born children. A Nigerian man and a Czech couple have argued that as the parents of children born here, they should be allowed to stay in the State.

The State, however, argued they had not spent an "appreciable" length of time here and it was in the "common good" to return them to Britain where their asylum applications had failed. The parents have been in Ireland for about a year.

Meanwhile, both Mr Stapleton and a spokeswoman for the Residents Against Racism campaign have said there was "growing panic" among asylum-seeking parents of Irish-born children since the Ayinde deportation.

Mr Stapleton said he had been advising such parents of Irish-born children to "get a solicitor because the situation is not straightforward and things could go wrong", while Ms Rosanna Flynn of RAR said she had been contacted by a number of foreign nationals concerned about "whether they are about to be airlifted out at dawn".

The Director of the Prison Services has described some media reports about the six deported asylum-seekers as "wildly inaccurate". While a number of media reports said all six had been on hunger strike, Mr Seán Aylward pointed out that only Mr Ayinde remained on hunger strike on Thursday morning.

One newspaper also said yesterday Mr Ayinde had been dragged naked and screaming from his cell on Thursday. Mr Aylward said that while one person had offered "token resistance", all six had walked out of the prison fully clothed.