A HOME Office policy giving migrants as little as 72 hours’ notice of their impending deportation was unlawful, the Court of Appeal ruled today.

The Medical Justice charity took legal action over the policy, under which migrants were given between three and seven days’ notice that they might be removed from the UK at some point in the next three months without any further warning.

The charity argued that it would be impossible for anyone who did not already have a lawyer to obtain one in the brief notice period, meaning that the policy posed “a serious threat to the rule of law.”