London Evening Standard/London
Cara Delevingne has joined the fight to stop a schoolgirl being deported from London without her family.
The model tweeted her support for Yashika Bageerathi, 19, who faces being sent back to Mauritius alone.
Yashika is a pupil at Oasis Academy Hadley, in Enfield. She moved to London in 2012 with her family. But she faces being sent back to Mauritius as early as tomorrow after the Home Office refused her appeal to stay in the UK.
Her case was considered separately to that of her mother, brother and sister because, at the age of 19, she is considered an adult.
Delevingne tweeted: “The Rt. Hon. Theresa May MP, Home Secretary: #FightforYashika Stop this sixth form student being deported alone. She deserves a future!”
Yashika, who has been offered a place at Queen Mary University in London to study maths, was yesterday in a cell at Yarl’s Wood awaiting the outcome of the application.
She told the Standard she had been detained without warning after attending a weekly appointment with Home Office inspectors who have rejected her application for asylum.
Her mother Sowbhagyawatee, 38, sister Shaivya, 16, and brother Cherish, 11, have not yet been informed of the outcome of their request and are still free to remain in the UK.
The family came to the country after escaping an “extremely dangerous” relative. From her cell, Yashika told the Standard: “I’m really scared. They would find me easily. They were very violent towards me and my mum since I was a child.
“I didn’t have any friends out there because of that situation. I never thought I would have so many friends as I do now.
“I came to know what it’s like to interact with people. I was a girl who never had a voice but here I am free.”
If a legal application fails today, Yashika is expected to be deported tomorrow, with only her schoolbag, the clothes she is wearing and the handful of change she took to the Home Office appointment. She said: “I have some school books with me so I have been doing some maths. I don’t speak to the other people. I feel like a prisoner again.”
Yashika was initially detained four days before Christmas when her application was first rejected. She was kept at Yarl’s Wood for six weeks before her headteacher Lynne Dawes secured bail pending a review of her case.
Dawes said: “Yashika is a really dedicated student and is very talented at maths.” Around 100 pupils from Oasis Academy Hadley, where Yashika is due to take A-levels in maths, French and chemistry in June, protested outside the Home Office yesterday, handing in a letter asking Home Secretary Theresa May to stop the deportation. The Home Office said: “We do not routinely comment on individual cases.”
