Last week, more than thirty British residents who had been scheduled to be forcibly removed to Jamaica in the dead of night were rescued from their deportation flight, thanks to the efforts of lawyers, activists and civil rights groups. Thirteen people were left on the plane and exiled. According to the Home Office, they were all ‘dangerous foreign criminals’ whose deportation was required by the 2007 UK Borders Act. Their lawyers argued that there were grounds for exception. Campaigners emphasised that the continuation of mass deportation flights would lead to the same injustices as the ‘Windrush scandal’ in 2018. The government, professing outrage at the reprieves, used the same comparison to make the opposite point.