A six-year-old deaf Iraqi boy who escaped from Islamic State (ISIS) execution by lethal injection and who found refuge in the U.K. is now facing a new problem: Where to stay?
This came about after the Home Office informed Lawand Hamadamin and his family that they would be deported to Germany from their current residence in Derby, England on Jan. 9, The Daily Mail reported.
Lawand and his family were forced to flee their home in Iraq in 2015 when ISIS ordered disabled children to be "liquidated" by lethal injection. Lawand was born deaf and mute.
He and his family first found a temporary home in a refugee camp in Dunkirk, France before they were offered a place to stay in Derby. There, Lawand was allowed to enrol at the Royal School for the Deaf Derby, where he has started learning how to communicate using British Sign Language.
But now Lawand and his family have been told they have one week to pack their belongings before they are deported to Germany.
The school in Derby is now working with DeafKidz International in an effort to reverse the Home Office decision.
Lawand's father Rebwar pleaded for some consideration, telling The Mirror: "He could not communicate when he started here and now he has no problem. We can't thank the school enough. If we are deported we will have no home. All the progress Lawand has made will be lost. We are devastated."
A Home Office spokesman defended the decision to deport the family, stating that according to law, refugees must apply for asylum in the first country of safety they reach. But Britain was not the first country of safety that the family reached since their fingerprints were first taken in Greece and Germany, the spokesman pointed out.
"The U.K. has a proud history of providing protection to those who need it, but it is only fair that we do not shoulder the burden of asylum claims that should rightly be considered by other countries," the spokesman said.
"Asylum seekers should claim in the first safe country they arrive in. Where there is evidence that an asylum seeker is the responsibility of another European country we will seek to return them there," he added.
