An Albanian man who tried to enter Britain illegally four times before being jailed for cannabis farming has avoided deportation after it was ruled he did not meet the legal definition of a ‘foreign criminal’.
Erind Koka, 33, came into the country unlawfully on a lorry in October 2019 after seven years of attempting to do so.
Within less than a year, in February 2020, he was convicted for involvement in class B drug production – ‘the watering, on one occasion of cannabis plants’ – and sentenced to eight months in prison.
It was decided two years later, in February 2022, he would be deported because it was considered ‘conducive to the public good’, as he was a ‘foreign criminal’ who had caused ‘serious harm’ with his offending.
But after Koka appealed in October 2023, it was ruled he did not actually count as a ‘foreign criminal’ – and so he was allowed to stay in the country. The Home Office appealed this ruling but it was upheld.
The judge said he did not count as a ‘foreign criminal’ because under the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002, offenders need to fulfil some of three specific criteria to be labelled as such.
They need to have been given a prison sentence of at least 12 months, convicted of ‘an offence that has caused serious harm’ – the basis of Koka’s deportation, as his sentence was only eight months – or be a ‘persistent offender’.
A first-tier tribunal judge said Koka’s offence ‘fell significantly short of one that can be said to have caused serious harm’, meaning he did not count as a ‘foreign criminal’ – and did not need to be deported.
Erind Koka, 33, came into the country unlawfully on a lorry in October 2019 after seven years of attempting to do so. Pictured: File photo
In May 2013, he was found by Border Agency staff, hiding undocumented in a trailer in Dunkirk, France (pictured, file photo)
When the decision to deport Koka was first made in February 2022, he raised an international protection claim as a refugee – but this was withdrawn a year later, in February 2023.
He appealed his deportation on human rights grounds in the October of that year and it was heard by a first-tier tribunal in August 2024, where the judge ruled in his favour. The upper tribunal upheld the decision after the Home Office appealed it.
Koka first tried to come to the UK in October 2012, using false documents to board a flight. He was barred from entry and removed to Finland.
Less than a year later, in May 2013, he was found by Border Agency staff, hiding undocumented in a trailer in Dunkirk, France.
He was found by French authorities, five years later, in 2018, in a campervan 30 miles away in the town of Coquelles, near Calais.
It was the following year he then unlawfully entered the UK on a lorry. He was arrested by South Wales Police in July 2020.
Koka’s case is one example of a backlog of 74,969 deportation appeal cases currently going through the immigration and asylum appeal courts.
Most of the cases involve those who have not been granted asylum appealing that rejection of their claims.
Ministers plan, according to reports from the Times earlier this week, to change the law to set a deadline for all asylum appeals to be heard within 24 weeks – half the current time it takes for them to be heard in first-tier immigration and asylum tribunal courts.
But legal bosses have warned this would not solve the real problem – a lack of available judges, which they say is often the cause of the adjourning of asylum appeal cases.
