A FRAIL 92-year-old grandmother could spend Christmas in a detention centre, her daughter said yesterday, as Theresa May’s immigration rules become ever more extreme.

South African Myrtle Cothill has been under threat of immediate deportation since October, after repeated appeals for compassion from her British family fell on deaf ears at the Home Office.

A petition calling for her to be allowed to stay reached over 12,000 signatures in the last 24 hours.

Ms Cothill, who moved to Britain in February last year, was told she had overstayed her six-month visitor’s visa and could only apply for a new visa if she returned to South Africa.

Her daughter Mary Wills, who has been a carer in Britain for the last 19 years, told the Star that the trip alone would kill her.

“There is no way I can send my mum back because she has got no family in South Africa,” Ms Wills said.

“Where would she go?”

She added that the family “walked in fear” of having Ms Cothill detained in the run-up to Christmas.

“Any time they could rock up at this door and demand to take her.

“The stories I heard of the deportations, it’s unbelievable, it would kill my mother.

“If they did that, they would be signing her death certificate, they really would.

“But they would have to get through me. They either would have to kill me or knock me out before they get to my mum.”

The coalition government changed immigration laws in July 2012, scrapping rules that enabled parents and grandparents over the age of 65 to join their family in Britain as elderly dependants.

The family’s barrister Jan Doerfel said: “The current immigration rule on adult dependent relatives is causing untold suffering.

“It is placing British citizens and other persons permanently settled in the UK into an impossible situation where they have to decide to either abandon their life and family here in order to look after their elderly relatives abroad or to remain in the UK and feel they are abandoning their dearest to the care of strangers during their most vulnerable years.

“This immigration rule clearly undermines the very essence of family values.”

You can sign the petition demanding Ms Cothill’s stay at www.change.org.