A mother and her young son who were forcibly removed from Scotland have been returned from Africa to the UK. Fatou Felicite Gaye and her son Arouna, four, have been left without a country they can call home after being refused entry to the Ivory Coast.
A mother and her young son who were forcibly removed from Scotland have been returned from Africa to the UK.
Fatou Felicite Gaye and her son Arouna, four, have been left without a country they can call home after being refused entry to the Ivory Coast.
The Children's Commissioner for Scotland, Tam Bailey, is working with the UK Border Agency to establish whether Arouna Gaye has been mistreated. The boy's mother claims he is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder because of a series of dawn raids, and he was due to be examined by a specialist in Glasgow next week.
They were deported from the Dungavel detention centre on Thursday, arriving in Ms Gaye's home country of Ivory Coast later that day.
However, immigration officials there refused to believe the family were citizens. Ms Gaye has no paperwork to prove her identity, and Arouna was born in the UK.
The five officials who had accompanied the family from Scotland to Africa, via Paris, were held on the plane with Ms Gaye and her son and returned to the UK, according to campaigners.
It has now been confirmed that Ms Gaye, in her 30s, has arrived in England and is currently being held at the Yarl's Wood immigration removal centre in Bedfordshire with her son.
The Rev Frank Murray, minister at St Rollox in Glasgow, which Ms Gaye regularly attended, said she was in an extremely distressed state.
He said: "She's exhausted and she's still being interrogated, though she's been awake since 2am on Thursday. She's got no paperwork to prove where she belongs, no passports, no visa. She's now stateless. It's a bizarre situation."
"What happens next?" he asked. "Do the UK Border Agency just take her to the UN and see if anyone will take her in?"
Mr Murray said she was unable to prove her Ivory Coast citizenship and that Arouna, despite being registered as a citizen of the country, has no real entitlement to live there because he was born in Dover, UK.
Ms Gaye is apparently adamant that she is from the French-African nation of the Ivory Coast. There are certified Ivory Coast citizens in Glasgow who are willing to testify to her nationality, Mr Murray said, and she is demonstrably fluent in French.
He added: "There's just no compassion here. Jacqui Smith hasn't listened to anyone on this. The government knows they've made a mess of this and they're at an impasse now.
"You can't have your borders totally open, obviously, but there comes a point in a case when you just have to admit you've got egg on your face and try to save the situation."
The Scottish Government has firmly opposed the removal of Ms Gaye and her son from the UK.
MSP Christine McKelvie wrote a letter to the Home Secretary earlier this week branding the removal "inhumane" and calling for leniency in this particular case.
A spokesman for the Unity Centre, a group of campaigners who help asylum seekers in Glasgow, which worked with the Gaye family prior to their deportation, said: "This just aggravates what they've done so far. They've gone so far as to take someone from home when they had already acknowledged concerns about their health. Arouna has suffered and they're still going to this length to remove the family."
The UK Border Agency said it does not comment on individual cases.
