For those like Andrew O’Connor, who despite significant mental health needs has been repatriated to a country he left as a child, the Open Arms is a lifeline
When Andrew O’Connor, a 39-year-old from Nottingham, woke up to loud knocking on his door on a May morning last year, he thought it was a window fitter he had been expecting. He opened the door to police officers who came to escort him to a centre to await deportation to Jamaica, the country he had left at the age of 10. O’Connor had no idea why. No one had told him, it seems, that a deportation order was made against him as early as 2017.
When the Home Office made the decision to deport O’Connor, he was being treated in a psychiatric hospital. The letter notifying him of the decision was delivered to the ward and left unopened on his bedside table, says Simon Robinson, a lawyer representing O’Connor.
