Mark Nelson, a 46-year-old Jamaican man who has lived in the UK for 26 years, is facing deportation to Jamaica under new anti-immigration measures announced in last week's immigration bill. Nelson, who runs his own car-mechanic business, has five British children and a British partner. He was sentenced to four years in prison in 2017 for growing cannabis plants, which he said was due to financial difficulties in his business. He has not committed any further offences.
Nelson previously wrote an opinion piece for the Guardian in 2022 about his deportation threat, stating that Jamaica is a place where he no longer knows anyone after his great-grandparents, who raised him, died when he was 16. His removal was later cancelled, and he was instead tagged and required to report weekly at a Home Office reporting centre. However, last Thursday, when Nelson reported as required, he was arrested, detained, and told the government plans to deport him to Jamaica.
Speaking from a detention centre near Heathrow Airport, Nelson said he was devastated. “I’m in a hot and filthy cell on the induction wing. My mental health is so bad because of what the Home Office has done to me. For the first time in my life, I have taken antidepressant medication,” he said. He added that his family is upset, with his brother crying on the phone upon hearing of his detention. “I haven’t been able to sleep a wink since they brought me here. I was in such a state of shock when they arrested me,” he said.
Nelson expressed concern about the impact on his children: “What the Home Office don’t think about when they try to deport someone like me is the impact it has not only on the person but on so many other people around them. I love my kids so much, and I can’t bear to think of them being without their dad. I try to be a good role model for them. I talk to them about my crime to try to ensure they don’t make the same mistake I made.”
His partner, Rachel Derbyshire, said the family is distraught. “It seems that the Home Office is not going to let this go. Mark’s mental health is really bad because of this. He’s a really lovely guy, but the Home Office is treating him as if he was a rapist or a murderer,” she said. The new immigration bill introduces a stricter test for family and private life under Article 8 in deportation cases, though exceptional circumstances such as social integration and family impact are considered.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “All foreign national offenders who receive a prison sentence in the UK are referred for deportation at the earliest opportunity. More than 70,000 illegal migrants and foreign national offenders have been returned since this government took office, a 41% increase.”
