Judge granted Jamaican paedophile the right to enter Britain as barring him would ‘breach his human rights’

Immigration judges have given a convicted child sex offender the right to enter Britain after ruling a ban would violate his human rights.

The latest shocking example of a ‘deeply perverse’ decision by the immigration courts concerns Jamaican pedophile Oniel Spence, who was jailed in the United States for a sexual offense against a 15-year-old girl.

Details of the case were first revealed by the Daily Mail today, after shadow home secretary Chris Philp this week criticized judges’ ‘tyranny’ over the immigration system.

Spence, now 43, applied to return to the UK in 2023 to join his wife and child, both British citizens, but was blocked by the Home Office.

The authorities rejected the application on the grounds that his expulsion was ‘in the public interest’.

The pedophile then appealed to the lower immigration court and received permission to come here from immigration judge Jonathan Greer.

His lawyers argued that preventing him from entering the UK violated Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which covers the right to ‘private and family life’.

Yvette Cooper, then Minister of Internal Affairs, appealed to the top immigration court against the decision.

But judges Madeleine Reeds and Nathan Moxon rejected his claims.

Current Home Affairs Minister Shabana Mahmood then submitted another case to the Court of Appeal.

earlier this month senior judges overturn original decisionHe described this as ‘perverse’ and ordered the case to be retried by the first-tier court.

This means Spence could still win the case at a future retrial.

Their earlier legal challenge had been allowed by junior judges, even though Spence’s lawyers had stated that Spence was “primarily sexually attracted to adults”, although the justices stated that it showed Spence had “at least a persistent or secondary sexual attraction to children”.

The child sex crime occurred in the United States in 2008, when he was 25 years old.

He was found guilty of ‘lewd and lascivious conduct with a victim under the age of 16’ at a nightclub in Saint Lucie, Florida.

Spence told the Home Office: ‘I started partying with a woman and she was underage.

‘I can’t take it back, but I learned from it.

‘It was just one night at the bar. ‘I should have just asked questions instead of partying.’

Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp, who this week attacked judges’ ‘tyranny’ over the immigration system, described the latest case as ‘deeply perverse’.

He was sentenced to three years in prison and deported from the United States to Jamaica after serving half of his sentence.

On the first appeal, judges found that Spence ‘had a sexual interest in and maintained relationships with children in the past’.

They added: ‘The appellant’s efforts to downplay his sexual involvement with children and his lack of candor about the nature of his offending raise, in my view, doubts as to whether he was actually expressing his sexual attraction to children.’

However, they stated that he had no other sexual convictions and that there was ‘no evidentiary basis’ to show that he was still having sex with children, and accepted his human rights appeal.

His wife and daughter are British citizens and have always lived in the UK.

Court documents showed Spence had never lived in Britain, but the family kept in touch by phone and met on holidays abroad.

At the Court of Appeal, the justices said Spence’s relationship with his now-wife began when he was a child.

Giving the leading judgment, Judge Lewis said: ‘The fact that he was primarily attracted to adults must mean that the lower court considered him to have at least a residual or secondary sexual attraction to children.’

He added that the trial court’s decision to accept Spence’s case was “frankly perverse.”

The judges accepted the Home Secretary’s appeal and ordered a new hearing at the first-tier court.

Mr Philp said: ‘This is a deeply perverse example of unelected judges trying to override elected ministers to allow a Jamaican child sex offender into the UK after the US rightly expelled him.

‘The cruelty of the judiciary continues.

‘We have seen foreign murderers, rapists, drug dealers and pedophiles allowed to remain in the UK by judges using ECHR interpretations that defy the will of Parliament and common sense.

‘Therefore, as I announced this week, we must leave the ECHR, abolish the immigration court and end the courts’ jurisdiction over immigration.

‘Deciding who enters or stays in the UK should be in the hands of our elected parliament, not unelected judges.’

A Home Office spokesman said: ‘We will do everything we can to continue to appeal this case.

‘We strongly believe that this individual’s presence in the UK is not in the public interest.

‘We will not allow foreign criminals to abuse our laws.

‘The Home Secretary was clear that anyone moving to the UK must have a clean criminal record.’