Refugee wants ConCourt to intervene in his pending deportation

Illegal immigrant Desta Abore wants the Constitutional Court to intervene in his pending deportation.

In June last year, Abore was arrested in KwaZulu-Natal for illegally entering the country, but he’s been using the legal system to stay in jail rather than risk deportation. The Ethiopian national said he would face the death penalty or jail time if he returned home.

Abore was initially sentenced to 50 days in jail or a fine of R1 500. He apparently opted for imprisonment, and while in custody, began legal processes to stop his deportation and began his asylum application.

Abore approached the KwaZulu-Natal High Court in Durban to extend his imprisonment.

The court obliged and granted him an extra 90 days of jail time, bringing his release date to 27 January ,2021. Home affairs then began the deportation process, but a magistrate in Krugersdorp granted him another 90 days behind bars.

In a bizarre twist of events, Abore then approached the High Court in Johannesburg in March to challenge the lawfulness of his imprisonment and sought an interdict against his deportation.

Abore is now saying that people in his community had settled the R1 500 fine after he was sentenced the first time, but authorities allegedly kept him in prison despite this. Abore also asked that he be released from court to apply for asylum.

His luck with the law seemed to run out at the High Court in Johannesburg, where his application was dismissed with costs. The court found there were contradictions with his arrival dates and ruled “that long queues at refugees offices could not be an excuse for not having the documents to be in the republic”.

Abore has now approached the Constitutional Court for relief, saying he skipped the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) because of the urgency of his application.

He said if he had approached the SCA first, he would be deported while the matter was ongoing.