Albanian people-smuggler deemed ‘valuable member of society’ can stay in UK

A jailed Albanian people-smuggler was allowed to remain in the UK after a judge ruled that he had become a “valuable member of society” despite having no “objective” evidence to justify his verdict.

In 2023, Kristjan Agolli, 36, was jailed for three years and three months for his key role in a people-smuggling operation that brought Albanians into the UK to work on illegal cannabis farms in converted homes or unused industrial buildings.

He was served with a deportation order by the Home Office, but he appealed on the basis that it would breach his right to a family life under article eight of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

His appeal was backed by a lower immigration tribunal judge. The judge ruled that it would be “unduly harsh” on his wife, who was Romanian, had never lived in Albania and could not speak the language.

The lower-tier judge based his decision solely on assurances by Agolli and his wife that he would not reoffend – even though there was no evidence, either in probation reports or attendance at rehabilitation courses, to support their claims.

He concluded: “[Agolli] poses a low risk of reoffending, and has not reoffended since his release from prison and has become a valuable member of society.”

The Home Office appealed against the judgment and, in a damning reassessment of the lower court’s verdict, an upper tribunal judge said it was “plainly wrong and rationally unsustainable” as well as “contrary to the weight of evidence”.

The case has now been sent back to the first-tier tribunal to be reconsidered on the basis that the original decision “erred in relying exclusively upon [Agolli’s] personal evidence and that of his wife, when finding as a fact that he has been rehabilitated”, according to the upper tribunal judge.

“There was no evidence of rehabilitative work undertaken by the claimant, either in his own evidence or in additional documents,” said the upper tribunal judge.

“Reliance on the protective factors of his family and wife was also over-optimistic: these same factors were available to the claimant at the time of the commission of his offending, and one of those whose clandestine entry he sought to facilitate was a family member.

“The first-tier judge’s reasons are inadequate and circular: they take no account of the public interest in deportation of foreign criminals nor of the absence of any evidence of rehabilitation beyond the assertion by the claimant and his wife.”

The upper tribunal also noted that the lower-tier ruling had contradicted the trial judge’s assessment of Agolli when he suggested that his behaviour was “very much out of character” and a “one-off”.

By contrast, the trial judge had noted Agolli had “an organisational role in the conspiracy scheme as the person co-ordinating the employment of people smuggled in”.

The trial judge said that he had been “close to the heart of the conspiracy, and not simply a one-off customer”.

The case, disclosed in court papers, is the latest example exposed by The Telegraph in which illegal migrants or convicted foreign criminals have used human rights laws in an attempt to remain in the UK or halt their deportations.

They include an Albanian criminal who avoided deportation after claiming his son had an aversion to foreign chicken nuggets, and a Pakistani paedophile who was jailed for child sex offences but escaped removal from the UK because it would be “unduly harsh” on his children.

There are a record 34,169 outstanding immigration appeals, largely on human rights grounds, which threaten to hamper Labour’s efforts to fast-track removals of illegal migrants.

Sir Keir Starmer last week pledged to close a loophole that enabled a Gaza family to come to the UK after applying under a Ukrainian refugee scheme.

Kemi Badenoch, the Tory leader, has called for an overhaul of human rights legislation that would limit the ability of judges to use ECHR family rights clauses to block deportations.

Both the Conservatives and Labour are vying to head off the electoral threat from Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, which has pledged to quit the ECHR.

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