Luke de Noronha teaches at UCL. Deporting Black Britons was published in 2020.
I got a text from Denico last Wednesday afternoon: ‘I’m okay bro it’s a disaster.’ Power remained down across 75 per cent of Jamaica, and that was all I heard from him for a few days. Aerial footage of rural St Elizabeth showed houses that looked as if they had exploded, with wooden beams and bits of roof strewn everywhere, and birds-eye views into people’s bedrooms. The landscape looks as if it’s been trampled on, the trees stripped sandy brown.
Chris texted me five days before the edge of the storm reached Jamaica. ‘Hurricane Melissa is coming. Can you spot me £50 to stack up on some food please?’ I checked projections from the US National Hurricane Centre, hoping the storm would blow further west. The hurricane approached slowly. It paused, lingered, crawled. I texted friends to ask if they were prepared. I told them to stay safe. It was magical thinking, like saying ‘have a safe flight.’
On 17 March 2022, a judge in the Immigration and Asylum First Tier Tribunal heard the case of AB, a 21-year-old man facing deportation to Jamaica. The case rested on AB’s criminal history. He was convicted in 2019 of offences relating to the supply of heroin and cocaine and sentenced to more than four years in youth custody. While he was in prison, the Home Office made a deportation...
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