For many years the Detained Fast Track (DFT), the system which has incarcerated asylum-seekers as a matter of routine as they await the result of their application for protection in the UK, has been seen as implacable. Previous legal challenges had failed to demonstrate its unlawfulness, leaving the Home Office to believe that could expand the scale and scope of the DFT as it chose (and boy did it – by 2013, 1 in 5 asylum-seekers were being routed into it). Adamant that detaining asylum seekers whilst their claims were being heard was inherently unjust and a violation of their right to liberty, Detention Action took the government to the High Court to challenge the DFT. Last week our litigation came to a climatic head: speaking to parliament, the Minister for Immigration, James Brokenshire, announced the suspension of the DFT in its entirety!
The article describes the long legal battle that has at last come to an end!
