Trevor and Desmond Johnson flew from Jamaica to London in 1971 as unaccompanied minors to join their parents who had moved to the UK several years earlier, hoping to make a better life for the family. The brothers were 10 and 11 when they arrived, both incredibly excited about the future, but almost half a century later, both men’s lives have been shattered by the Windrush scandal.
Trevor, a widowed single parent looking after two teenage daughters, was wrongly told in 2014 that he was in Britain illegally and had his benefits cut off. An employee from Capita – the private company used by the Home Office for immigration work – called to tell him that officers would come to his house to deport him back to the country he had left as a child. He spent that night waiting up with his daughters, listening for the knock at the door.
Because he was told he was not allowed to work, and was not eligible for benefits, the family was destitute and for two years they were forced to rely on food banks. Sometimes Trevor had to beg on the streets of Brixton so he could heat his home.
As Trevor struggled to avoid deportation to Jamaica, his older brother Desmond, who had travelled back to Jamaica in 2001 to attend their father’s funeral and as the eldest son had stayed on to support his widowed mother, was fighting a reverse battle to be allowed back into the UK. He has failed, and remains stuck in Jamaica, meaning he has not seen his daughter for 16 years.
Both men are devastated by the way the government’s “hostile environment” policy has destroyed two family units. But their anger is subdued, deadened by an understanding that this is simply how British officials routinely treat people in their situation.
This sense that there was nothing particularly remarkable about Home Office cruelty – even on such an extreme level – partly explains why the full extent of this scandal has taken so long to emerge.
Trevor tried repeatedly to explain to Home Office staff that he was here legally, but no one believed him, even the then Home Office minister James Brokenshire. Responding to a complaint about his treatment from the local MP he stated: “Mr Johnson’s application was refused because he had failed to provide the Home Office with evidence to show that he was in the UK prior to 1 January 1973.”
The minister was apparently unaware of the profound difficulties that thousands of Windrush generation residents were having as they attempted to gather the enormous amount of paperwork required to persuade Home Office staff that they were not illegal immigrants.
Asked by ITV’s Robert Peston on Sunday about the case, Brokenshire said that during his time in the Home Office staff had looked “compassionately” at a number of cases, and added: “It’s about being firm but fair.”
Trevor, who was watching Brokenshire talk about the crisis on television, said this was not an accurate summary of how he had been treated. The whole family had been terrified by the deportation threats. “I was scared; my kids were scared. The worst was that there was no money. I had to go out on the street, asking people for money for electricity. It was very, very degrading,” he said.
The Home Office finally relented in his case after two years, when his sister posted details of his case on Facebook and an 81-year-old retired dinner lady from his primary school recognised his picture and got in touch.
She later sent a letter to the Home Office, who issued him with a biometric card, recognising his right to be in the UK (albeit a temporary one that will need to be renewed in 2024). His difficulties have still not been fully resolved because the DWP has refused to repay 18 months of unpaid benefits, and he is receiving bailiffs’ letters threatening to come and remove valuables.
In Jamaica, Desmond was having difficulties returning to the UK for his daughter’s 21st birthday. He remained in Jamaica, to look after his mother, but in 2014, she was coming to England for a family wedding and suggested he accompany her. “She said come and give her a surprise for her birthday.” He applied for a visa to return to the UK, but it was rejected on the grounds that he had not provided details of a historical, trivial and spent criminal conviction on the application form.
“I had no recollection of it,” he said. Officials had found records of a drunk and disorderly offence dating back about 20 years. It was such a minor matter, which had resulted in a small fine, that Desmond had entirely forgotten about it. “They said I lied on the form. I had no idea what they meant,” he said. They sent back his application with a note stating that his application had been refused and that he could not reapply for 10 years.
“It was a bombshell,” he said. “It has been so painful. I wonder if my son or daughter died tomorrow, what would I do? I don’t want to come back to live in England; I just want to see my kids. It hurts. The last time I saw my daughter she was about seven. I feel so bad about it.”
Desmond, who went to secondary school in London and spent 25 years working as a as a greengrocer on a market stall and later as a plasterer, said he felt betrayed. “My mother and father came to England to do the work that other people didn’t want to do,” he said.
His father worked first in a television factory, and later as a baker, and his mother worked as a cleaner. In 1972 they had six children under 16 in London – three of them born in Jamaica, and three more later in London. They worked hard and instilled in their children the idea that it was crucial to work hard and do well.
“I feel disgusted by what has happened,” Desmond said. He has been watching the unfolding political crisis from Jamaica and is unimpressed by the government’s response. The prime minister’s decision to apologise three times in three days was not enough. “She should resign, and the home secretary too. I had no idea there were so many of us in this situation,” he said.
Trevor feels equally betrayed. “I’ve been here since I was 10,” he said. “I grew up with white people all around me; I worked with white people; I felt I was English. When this happened I didn’t feel English any more.” He worked for a while on a market stall and as a security guard until he began to care full-time time for his daughters when they were aged two and five.
He remembers receiving two calls from a Capita employee in July 2016, informing him that staff would be coming to remove him. The call came as he was fighting to get official recognition that he was in the UK legally.
“The first time, it sounded like it was a young lady, a Scottish lady – she was really rude. I said: I’m sorry love, I’m not going anywhere, I’ve got a right to be here and put the phone down. I was up all night worried sick about it,” Trevor said. “I explained to my daughters what the problem was. I said, ‘The Home Office is trying to remove me.’ We all sat down and waited to see if they would come; I thought they would come and remove me in the night.”
No one came and the following morning he went to Lambeth Law Centre, which is still operating despite cuts to legal aid for help. “I wouldn’t have opened the door,” he said. Staff coming to deport other Windrush victims have arrived armed with battering rams.
Trevor first became vaguely aware of possible immigration-related complications when his father died and he wanted to go back to Jamaica for the funeral with the rest of the family in 2001. He had never applied for a British passport (he had never contemplated a holiday abroad, and had no reason otherwise to incur the expense of an application).
He had difficulties working out what to do, until he managed to get a temporary travel warrant from the Jamaican high commission. Because this was a more relaxed era, before the tightening of immigration rules, he was able to return to the UK on this paper – something that would be unthinkable now.
But problems only began in 2014, when he was sent by the jobcentre back to college for a literacy course. “The college started asking me for papers. I said, ‘I don’t need papers.’ I thought I was here legally since I had been here since I was a kid,” he said.
Somehow officials must have tipped off the Home Office, and when Trevor went to his GP for a document indicating that he was eligible for sickness benefits, he was told: “We can’t give you a letter because the DWP has told us don’t issue one.”
“All the benefits, the child tax credits and the rent got cut off. It was very hard. Four old ladies on my estate gave us food at Christmas,” he said. “It was horrible. I had no clothes; my daughters had no clothes. My sisters came and gave me food. I ate less; I was struggling to eat because of all the worry.” Trevor is profoundly grateful to those people who helped him during that period.
He has been trying repeatedly to get the DWP to issue several thousand pounds he is owed in sickness benefits that were stopped so he can extricate himself from the debt he got into when he was left penniless. The London borough of Lambeth quickly repaid housing benefit so he could get rid of his rent arrears but the DWP has been less helpful.
“They don’t want to give me anything. I called and asked what about my back payment? She said, ‘You’re getting benefits, aren’t you?’ I said I was owed two years’ money. She put the phone down on me. I’m not getting anywhere; all I’m asking for is what was owed to me,” he said. Officials have recently told him that they have lost his paperwork.
“I have loads of bailiffs’ letters starting from 2015; I couldn’t pay the television licence,” he said. Before this problem, he was never in debt. “I used to pay my bills every week.”
Q&A Timeline of the 'hostile environment' policy
2012: Home secretary Theresa May: 'The aim is to create here in Britain a really hostile environment for illegal migration.'
2012: Hostile environment working group established, involving many government ministers.
2013: Sarah Teather MP raises concerns about the working group and its stated aims.
2013: Government introduces bill which became the Immigration Act 2014, and introduces key measures of the hostile environment.
2014: Chasing Status warns of a 'virtually invisible and rarely acknowledged group who can’t easily prove their legal status'. Home Office responds: 'It is up to anyone who does not have an established immigration status to regularise their position – however long they have been here'.
2014: Civil society organisations brief parliament during the passage of the 2014 Immigration Act that 'individuals often do not have any identity documentation or confirmed status but have a right to remain in the UK'.
2014: Impact assessments of a Right to Rent scheme warn: 'Some non-UK born older people may have additional difficulties in providing original documentation.' Officials respond that work had been done to ensure checks 'do not have an adverse impact on any age group'.
2016: A letter from immigration minister James Brokenshire reveals he knew of a Windrush victim having extreme difficulty proving he had arrived in the UK before 1971, and knew repeated legal action had been mounted to persuade the Home Office to recognise the rights of a man who had lived here for 49 years.
2018: A Liberty and the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants dossier sets out many warnings received by the government regarding the impacts of its policies.
His mother in Jamaica was extremely upset about the situation. “She did everything she could to help. She was really angry.” His younger sister, Cardlin Johnson, 51, has been working for years on helping her brothers sort out their wrongful immigration issues.
She spent all her free time between looking after her children and working as a network traffic controller for Transport for London visiting records offices and archives, trying to track down school records, struggling to find paperwork that showed Trevor had been in the UK since before 1 January 1973.
Brokenshire’s letter to the MP Kate Hoey points out that her efforts failed. Not only had Trevor Johnson failed to provide evidence that he was in the UK before 1 January, Brokenshire noted (with a precision that gives a clear insight into the extraordinarily high evidence requirements made by the Home Office): “He has also been unable to demonstrate that he has been continuously resident in the UK for the years: 1989 to 1990, 1994 to 1995 and 1997 to 1998.” The letter concludes that the Home Office was maintaining “the refusal decision”.
“It has been very distressing for the whole family,” Cardlin said. “I know the hard work and chasing around I had to do. The government says organisations aren’t allowed to retain documentation for too long. Sometimes data protection laws meant I wasn’t allowed to get the information. Trevor got very depressed. He worried about what was going to happen to his daughters if they deported him. He came here when he was 10. The system is a total disgrace.”
She was puzzled why such a shocking case had not attracted much attention from MPs or local papers when it was going through the courts. The Windrush generation are “law-abiding, hardworking, keep their heads down and don’t usually make a fuss”, she said.
Trevor also feels angry. “Someone should resign. Theresa May was there at the time; she should go,” he said. “It was something to do with racism; it is funny how it is all black people affected. They destroyed evidence so I couldn’t show who we were.”
Asked to comment on the case, the Home Office responded by email, stating that Trevor made a No Time Limit (NTL) application in 2015 but it was rejected due to the incorrect fee and an incomplete form. His sister said that was not correct.
He was later granted NTL in August 2016. An official said Desmond should contact the new Windrush hotline and indicated that officials would now have the flexibility to look again at his case.
On Sunday Trevor was called for the first time by a Home Office official. He refused to speak to them and told them to call Cardlin. She said someone who worked for “premium services” and had been drafted in to help deal with the Windrush issue was calling everyone affected to update them on what was happening.
Cardlin was told the government was “pushing through legislation in the next couple of weeks to offer those affected citizenship”. However, a Downing Street spokesperson said they were unaware of that.