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.
Robinson says that as O’Connor was unaware of the decision, he did not have the opportunity to appeal it.
Within a week O’Connor was getting off a plane in Jamaica. Confused and with nowhere to go, he found accommodation in Open Arms, a shelter in Kingston offering long-term support.
Of the 85 men now living there, about two-fifths have been returned to Jamaica forcibly, most from the UK, the US and Canada, says Yvonne Grant, the founder of the shelter. Between 2020 and 2022, the UK and the US deported at least 744 people to Jamaica.
O’Connor, who has paranoid schizophrenia, moved to the UK with his parents as a child and had permanent residency.
His medical condition, he recalls, first emerged in his teenage years, and since then he has often been admitted to psychiatric hospitals.
O’Connor has also served two short prison sentences, both less than three months, for non-violent petty crimes. Unlike many of those deported from the UK, O’Connor did not meet the threshold for “automatic deportation”, Robinson says, which generally means prison sentences of one year or more.
“The Home Office did not have to pursue a deportation,” says Robinson. “They chose to do it because on the assessment of the secretary of state, Andrew’s presence in the UK was ‘not conducive to public good’.”
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The human toll of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) is huge and rising. These illnesses end the lives of approximately 41 million of the 56 million people who die every year – and three quarters of them are in the developing world.
NCDs are simply that; unlike, say, a virus, you can’t catch them. Instead, they are caused by a combination of genetic, physiological, environmental and behavioural factors. The main types are cancers, chronic respiratory illnesses, diabetes and cardiovascular disease – heart attacks and stroke. Approximately 80% are preventable, and all are on the rise, spreading inexorably around the world as ageing populations and lifestyles pushed by economic growth and urbanisation make being unhealthy a global phenomenon.
NCDs, once seen as illnesses of the wealthy, now have a grip on the poor. Disease, disability and death are perfectly designed to create and widen inequality – and being poor makes it less likely you will be diagnosed accurately or treated.
Investment in tackling these common and chronic conditions that kill 71% of us is incredibly low, while the cost to families, economies and communities is staggeringly high.
In low-income countries NCDs – typically slow and debilitating illnesses – are seeing a fraction of the money needed being invested or donated. Attention remains focused on the threats from communicable diseases, yet cancer death rates have long sped past the death toll from malaria, TB and HIV/Aids combined.
'A common condition' is a Guardian series reporting on NCDs in the developing world: their prevalence, the solutions, the causes and consequences, telling the stories of people living with these illnesses.
Tracy McVeigh, editor
O’Connor had no established relationships in Jamaica – all his family and his partner live in the UK – but the Home Office judged deportation would not violate his human right to family life. It was a decision that fits an established pattern of British immigration policy, says Luke de Noronha, a researcher at University College London and the author of Deporting Black Britons.
“Since the mid-2000s the aim of UK legislative changes regarding deportation has been to shift the scales in favour of public interest and against the rights of individuals to family and private live,” De Noronha says.
Grant was part of the Windrush generation – invited to the UK from Caribbean countries between 1948 and 1973 to help with the postwar labour shortages. She left Jamaica before the country gained independence in 1964 and settled in London, where she trained as a psychiatric nurse and started a family. “Back then no one really thought about visas and documents,” she says. “You just hopped on a plane and that was it.”
Grant returned to Jamaica when she retired, but these days she is back at work. Officials processing deportees are aware of the services offered by Open Arms, and she often finds herself driving to Kingston airport to pick up arrivals – men with no family or friends in Jamaica who need somewhere to go. The shelter she runs is the only organisation on the island which, alongside accommodation, aims to offer comprehensive support to people who, like O’Connor, return unwillingly after a lifetime in another country.
“We try to do as much as possible for people in that situation: we work hard to get them used to Jamaica,” she says. “We help them sort out the documents; get their Jamaica birth certificates, tax registration number, etc.” Open Arms also providesresidents with access to vocational training courses and opportunity to work at the shelter’s bee farm.
Open Arms has an established relationship with the UK government. It is thanks to British grants that the shelter was able to offer its residents individual sleeping cubicles. In 2020, Grant was awarded an MBE for her work.
But the British aid and recognition given to the shelter is a double-edged sword, migration researchers say.
“Open Arms as a UK-funded homeless shelter is regularly referenced by British governmental institutions to justify cases of deportation,” says De Noronha.
“I just hope I can get back on my feet soon,” says John, 38, who has been living at Open Arms for more than a year. He was deported to Jamaica from the US after emigrating at the age of 14 and has a soft American accent. “I know patois”, he says, “but it doesn’t sound right when I speak it.”
While grateful for the shelter, Open Arms is “not really his style”, John says. He does not appreciate the 5am wake-up time and regimented structure. Recently he started working at restaurant and hopes he will be able to move into his own place. “I love Jamaica, it’s not that I never wanted to come back,” he says. “But on my own terms, not like this.”
The average resident, Grant says, remains at the shelter for two years before moving on to independent living, but for those who had been returned to Jamaica after leaving as children, their stay can be longer.
Deportees face stigma in Jamaica and a British or American accent can be an obstacle to employment, says De Noronha. They can find themselves associated with criminality or seen as “failures” who “wasted a golden opportunity”.
Since arriving in Jamaica, O’Connor is struggling to fit in. He has not been able to access his medication as the Jamaica health service does not fund it, although he is seen by a mental health team who regularly visit Open Arms. Robinson says his mental state has deteriorated significantly since he was deported.
O’Connor says he feels confused. “I don’t know what’s going on,” he says. “And I still don’t know why I was sent here.”
According to O’Connor’s legal team, there is no evidence that he had ever been effectively served the documents or made aware of his situation.
At least twice during the five years before O’Connor’s removal, the deportation process was held up by the Jamaican High Commission’s refusal to issue an emergency travel document for O’Connor – who did not have a valid passport. They judged he did not have the mental capacity to understand his situation. On one occasion he was described as “behaving like a 10-year-old child”.
It is unclear under what circumstances documents were provided for O’Connor in 2022 and the Jamaican High Commission could not be reached for comment.
Unlike the other men at Open Arms, O’Connor has a fighting chance of returning.
“My only hope is finding a British wife,” jokes 28-year-old Jacob. He says he was deported from Lancashire after emigrating to the UK as a child and found his way to Open Arms after a suicide attempt. “My biggest regret is not seeing my siblings grow up,” he says. Jacob does not see a future for himself on the island.
“Most of our residents go on to find jobs and build successful lives,” says Grant. “Many get involved with churches or sports teams. In Jamaica it’s not hard to find a new family.”
But O’Connor does not think he’ll be able to build a new life in Jamaica. “I really hope I get to leave this behind,” he says.