CK & Ors, R (On the Application Of) v Secretary of State for the Home Department
2014
ADMINISTRATIVE COURT
UK
CORAM
- Ms GERALDINE CLARK
Areas of Law
- Administrative Law
- Immigration Law
- Human Rights Law
2014
ADMINISTRATIVE COURT
UK
CORAM
AI Generated Summary
The case concerns a family of Sikh asylum seekers from Afghanistan challenging the Secretary of State's refusal to exercise her discretion under the Dublin II Regulation to consider their asylum claims in the UK. The court held that decisions under the Dublin II Regulation are not generally subject to judicial review unless there is a risk of inhuman or degrading treatment. The court also found that although the Secretary of State's decision involved an error of law regarding Article 15.2, it did not result in prejudice to the Claimants. Therefore, the claim for judicial review was dismissed.
Judgment
Geraldine Clark :
Can asylum seekers bring judicial review proceedings to challenge the Secretary of State for the Home Department’s refusal to exercise her discretion under the Dublin II Regulation to permit their asylum claims to be examined in the United Kingdom?
The Claimants are a family of Sikh asylum seekers of Afghan nationality. The First and Second Claimants are husband and wife respectively and the Third Claimant is their daughter who was born in 2009. Following a long and difficult journey from Afghanistan, they arrived in France in August 2012 where they were briefly detained and fingerprinted as asylum seekers.
However they chose not to remain in France. The First Claimant had an adult brother and sister living in London who had come to the United Kingdom as refugees some 16 years ago and who are now British citizens. The First Claimant entered the United Kingdom using a false passport and, when his presence in London was discovered on 23 September 2012, he claimed asylum here. He was subsequently joined by the Second and Third Claimants who entered the United Kingdom on 29 October 2012 and immediately claimed asylum here. Around November 2012 the Second Claimant became pregnant with her second child, who was born on 19 August 2013. She discovered that she was pregnant in mid-December 2012. On 16 December 2012 the Claimants moved to accommodation in Bolton.
The European Union member states have a Common European Asylum System. Council Regulation (EC) No. 343/2003 (“the Dublin II Regulation”) establishes the criteria and mechanism for determining the member state of the European Union responsible for examining an asylum application lodged in one of the member states by a third country national. As may be seen from the preamble to the Regulation, it is intended to establish objective fair criteria and make it possible to determine rapidly the member state responsible for examining an asylum application while preserving family unity so far as this is compatible with other objectives.
Under the ranked criteria set out in Chapter III of the Dublin II Regulation it was France, where the Claimants had first irregularly entered a member state, which was responsible for examining the Claimants’ asylum applications pursuant to Article 10.
Article 7 of the Regulation, which provides for asylum seekers who have family members who have been allowed to reside in a member state as refugees to have their asylum applications dealt with in the