Afghan asylum-seeker in UK still wearing ankle tag months after it was deemed unlawful

LONDON: An Afghan asylum-seeker in the UK has been left wearing an ankle tag months after the pilot scheme he was part of was ended for being unlawful.

The man, identified as MM, revealed he has been made to wear the tag monitoring his location for 20 months and has been given no explanation why, which has left him in a state of “constant stress.”

The GPS tag, part of a Home Office pilot scheme to monitor the locations of 600 migrants, was put on in 2022 after MM spent 60 days in a detention center, having arrived in the UK via a small boat across the English Channel.

The Home Office insisted the tags of all the scheme’s participants were removed when it ended in December after the UK Information Commissioner John Edwards declared it breached data protection law and was “highly intrusive.”

MM, though, was left with his still attached and was provided no explanation from the Home Office as to why.

“Being fitted with this tag has been a constant stress for more than a year and a half. I struggled with sleep because I had to keep the tag charged at all times, including at night, but it would often beep and wake me up,” he said.

“I have had security guards following me like I’m a thief when I go shopping. People in my community do not understand why I have been tagged. They think I am a dangerous criminal. There is physical pain too — it caused a wound that keeps opening up and bleeding.

“It has really affected all parts of my life.”

He continued: “If the law is applied equally, I do not understand why I was fitted with a tag but others were not. Nobody else in the hotel I stayed in had a tag.

“I don’t understand why this injustice has happened. I do not understand why the Home Office needed to monitor everywhere I went and everything I was doing. This was not explained to me at all.”

Niamh Grahame, a solicitor at the Public Law Project, which represented MM, said: “Our client has been subject to a harmful and unnecessary experiment. There is mounting evidence of the harm caused by GPS tagging and incredibly limited evidence of asylum-seekers absconding in significant numbers.

“GPS tagging is an inhumane and disproportionately invasive bail condition. Instead of expanding its use, the Home Office should stop this practice altogether.”

A Home Office spokesperson said: “All individuals who were subject to electronic monitoring as part of the Expansion Pilot, and remained in contact with us, had their tags removed before the pilot ended on Dec. 14, 2023.”