Three activists who lay on the road outside Brook House immigration centre in November 2021, preventing people being put on a deportation flight, were found not guilty of causing a public nuisance by a jury at Lewes crown court on 13 June.
Griff Ferris, Callum Lynch and Rivka Micklethwaite had argued that they were concerned about the possible fates of the detainees if forced to fly back to Jamaica.
On 18 July, both anti-racist and anti-migrant protests met the Bibby Stockholm, a cargo ship intended to hold 500 asylum-seekers, when it arrived in Portland.
Back on 29 June, the court of appeal ruled that deporting asylum-seekers to Rwanda was unlawful because there was a real risk that they might be returned to their home countries to face persecution or other inhumane treatment.
Meanwhile, the illegal migration bill, which allows migrants arriving by ‘illegal means’ to be immediately deported, became law on 20 July and will come into effect in the next few months.
The government was forced to withdraw sections allowing the law to apply retrospectively, so migrants already here cannot be deported without their case for asylum being heard.