Judge Granted Jamaican Paedophile the Right to Enter Britain as Barring Him Would ‘Breach His Human Rights’

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The latest shocking example of a ‘deeply perverse’ ruling from the immigration courts involves Jamaican paedophile Oniel Spence, who was jailed in the United States for a sexual offence against a 15-year-old girl.

Details of the case are revealed by the Daily Mail for the first time today after shadow home secretary Chris Philp this week blasted judges’ ‘tyranny’ over the immigration system.

Spence, now 43, applied to come to the UK in 2023 to join his wife and child – who are both British nationals – but was blocked by the Home Office.

Officials barred his application on the grounds his exclusion was ‘conducive to the public good’.

The paedophile then lodged an appeal at the lower immigration tribunal and won permission to come here from immigration judge Jonathan Greer.

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

The Home Secretary at the time, Yvette Cooper, appealed to the upper immigration tribunal against the decision.

But judges Madeleine Reeds and Nathan Moxon refused her arguments.

Current Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood then brought a further case at the Court of Appeal.

Earlier this month senior judges overturned the original decision, describing it as ‘perverse’, and ordered the case to be re-heard by the first-tier tribunal.

It means Spence could still win his case in a future re-hearing.

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The child sex offence took place in the United States in 2008, when he was 25 years old.

He was convicted of ‘lewd and lascivious conduct with a victim aged under 16’ in a nightclub in Saint Lucie, Florida.

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Judges in the first appeal found Spence ‘has been sexually attracted to children and has pursued relationships with children in the past’.

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But they noted there had been no further sexual convictions and there was ‘no evidential basis’ to show he was still pursuing sex with children, and granted his human rights appeal.

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

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In the Court of Appeal, judges noted that Spence’s relationship with his now wife began when she, too, was a child.

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