The European Court of Justice (ECJ) [official website] ruled [judgment] Tuesday that UK courts may decide if the daughter-in-law of Abu Hamza poses a threat subject to triggering a deportation order. The case deals with the rights of immigrants and refugees who have committed crimes that create a deportation order but have children who are citizens of the host country. In this case CS was sentenced to serve at least a year of incarceration. Upon her release she was given a deportation order. She appealed arguing that the deportation would deprive her child of his rights and responsibilities as a citizen of the EU by subjecting him to removal by forcing his parents to leave. The British courts asked the ECJ to determine whether the courts had the power to expel a non citizen who is the primary caregiver of a citizen child. The ECJ held that the it is up to the courts to determine if the individual poses such a danger to the security of the nation that the removal of the individual and the citizen child should be expelled.

Article 20 TFEU must be interpreted as precluding legislation of a Member State which requires a third-country national who has been convicted of a criminal offence to be expelled from the territory of that Member State to a third country notwithstanding the fact that that national is the primary carer of a young child who is a national of that Member State, in which he has been residing since birth without having exercised his right of freedom of movement, when the expulsion of the person concerned would require the child to leave the territory of the European Union, thereby depriving him of the genuine enjoyment of the substance of his rights as a Union citizen. However, in exceptional circumstances a Member State may adopt an expulsion measure provided that it is founded on the personal conduct of that third-country national, which must constitute a genuine, present and sufficiently serious threat adversely affecting one of the fundamental interests of the society of that Member State, and that it is based on consideration of the various interests involved, matters which are for the national court to determine.

.Australian Immigration Minister Peter Dutton announced [JURIST report] in August that the governments of Australia and Papua New Guinea plan to close the controversial Manus Island detention center. Acting US Solicitor General Ian Gershengorn in July asked [JURIST report] the US Supreme Court to reconsider the case challenging the Obama administration’s immigration enforcement program. The Supreme Court of Canada in July rejected [JURIST report] an appeal by the Attorney General of Canada asking the court to review a lower court decision instructing the country to reconsider revocation of a former-Nazi’s Canadian citizenship.