Amika Brown, a woman who has been living in the UK for 22 years, claims she has been left “traumatised” after receiving a letter from the Home Office informing her that she could be deported. Brown, from Luton, married for the second time in 2019, around two weeks after being naturalised as a British citizen and acquiring a British passport. Last month, she was sent a letter by the Home Office claiming that she had obtained her citizenship through false identity and could, therefore, be “removed” from the UK and returned to her native Jamaica.
Brown immediately emailed the Home Office her birth certificate to confirm her name and date of birth, which was 1982, unlike what was stated in the letter from the Home Office, which claimed Brown was born in 1979. She also sent her brother’s birth certificate, which confirms that he was born in 1979, proving that the dates are incorrect. Brown claimed she felt like she was in limbo as she has not heard back from the Home Office, despite sending over evidence of her identity.
In a statement, the Home Office said it was their “longstanding position that [they] do not comment on individual cases.” Brown expects the Home Office to provide her with a letter confirming that she has proven her identity and is not a fraudster as well as an apology for the situation. Brown graduated in July from the University of Bedfordshire in accounting and finance and hopes to become a fully chartered accountant.
This incident comes amid a series of reports on the Windrush scandal, which saw thousands of people from Commonwealth countries, many of whom had been living in the UK for decades without documentation, wrongly deported. A report published in March 2021 concluded that the UK government “utterly failed” the Windrush generation.
In this context, Brown’s case raises questions and adds pressure on the Home Office over the accuracy of its data processing and checks regarding people’s identities.
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