Asma Khan has been told she will be deported to Pakistan and be separated from her ill mother, who is allowed to stay. A woman who has spent half her life in the UK has been told she must leave immediately and be separated from her ill mother, who she is caring for, after a 14-year asylum battle. Asma Khan, 30, came to the UK from Pakistan as a 15-year-old with her mother, who she says was fleeing domestic abuse. Her asylum case was initially refused in 2010 and she has spent the past 14 years challenging that decision.
Since 2016, the pair have been unable to access housing services, refused access to any benefits or state financial support, and unable to work or study in the UK. They’ve been left destitute and homeless for seven years, relying on charity support for their most basic needs. This only changed in 2023 when the Home Office provided them with housing, under a clause for people who have exhausted their asylum appeal rights but who have submitted new evidence about their case.
Her mother Amna, 50, has now been given the right to appeal her asylum refusal again, but Asma has been barred from further appealing the decision and has been ordered to leave her home ahead of imminent deportation to Pakistan. She has already been detained for removal twice before, and was on the plane on airport tarmac in 2017 when she was given a last-minute reprieve because of her role as her mother’s carer.
Speaking from their home in Birmingham, Asma told The Independent: “They have asked me to leave this house. My mum has an appeal right and she is allowed to stay in the house, but for me they say ‘you are evicted’. “I am waiting for any hostel that can accept me and my mum, because I can’t leave her alone. It is very hard for her to live. I am giving her medicine. Now we are just waiting for accommodation where we can live together.”.
Speaking about her role as a carer for her mum, she said: “For depression, anxiety and panic attacks she is taking medicine, and I help her take that and take her to appointments. I do all the cooking and, after all this trauma and everything that has happened, I also suffer from fainting attacks. Mum is helping me, I am helping mum. We are both taking care of each other.”. A GP letter submitted to the Home Office detailed that Asma’s mother Amna “suffers with severe anxiety, depression and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder following years of abuse and stress”. The GP describes Amna as an “extremely vulnerable adult” who would suffer considerably if she is separated from her daughter.
When Asma came to the UK as a teenager, she was able to access education until the age of 18 and did GCSEs and a BTEC science diploma at a sixth-form college in Stoke-on-Trent. However, since 2016 she has lost the right to study, and said she had to give up on plans to go to university to study pharmaceutical or computer science. It was in 2016 that their government help, which included £36 a week financial support, ended and they were made homeless. “We found ourselves moving from one hostel to another, desperately searching for a stable place to call home,” she explained.
“In 2016, the Home Office refused my case and they said you are not allowed to continue any further education, nothing at all. Once you are destitute, you are not allowed to do anything. I recently submitted an application to enroll in two courses at BAES college, one in IT and one in graphic designing, but now I am evicted I don’t think I will be able to do them.”. She is currently living in fear that she will be returned to Pakistan at her next immigration reporting date at the end of February.
Aliya Khan, at Hope Project, a charity that has supported Asma and Amna with their asylum case, said it would be very dangerous for the pair to return to Pakistan. She said: “The Home Office don’t understand what she will face if she returns to Pakistan, and they minimised the violence Amna suffered. I think there is a huge danger to them. “As two lone women, they would struggle to relocate to another place in Pakistan, so would face having to return to the family they fled from.”.
Loraine Masiya Mponela, a community organiser based in Coventry, said: "I came to know Asma and her mum in 2022 and we have remained in touch since. Asma was on our volunteers list when I was part of the organising team for asylum seekers group in Birmingham. They have been through a lot. Asma likes to support others despite her the challenges she and her mum are facing. It is my hope that they can be given the right to stay so they can start to live as human beings again.".
