An Albanian who was kept in a psychiatric hospital in England was immediately expelled from there and sent by charter plane to the capital of Albania, Tirana.
It comes after the Independent Monitoring Boards (IMB), a watchdog for prisons and immigration removal centres, raised concerns about the incident last summer in its annual report published on Thursday. According to the report, the removal papers were handed to the man in the secure psychiatric unit by a doctor there and not by a Home Office official.
The man signed the release papers, but IMB monitors said they were unsure he knew what he was signing – all the documents were in English and they were unclear about his level of comprehension.
When he was removed from the psychiatric unit, he was made to wait in a Home Office contractor's van before boarding a plane to Albania.
When monitors asked the Home Office about the incident, officials said it was in line with published policies, but did not engage further with the concerns raised.
There are almost weekly deportation charter flights to Albania. The IMB inspected nine of them and found that the treatment of the deportees "lacked fair and humane treatment in all aspects".
The report also raised concerns about a fourfold increase in the use of restraints – from four incidents in 2022 to 16 in 2023.
Some of the returnees had been classified as vulnerable while in detention and the IMB was aware of three incidents where returnees had attempted to take their own lives just hours before their flights were due to depart.