Rosina Davis v SSHD: High Court rules on lawfulness of Heathrow airport detention

The High Court has handed down its judgement in R (Rosina Davis) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2026] EWHC 1329 (Admin), a judicial review arising from the detention of a Ghanaian national at Heathrow Airport in August 2023. Mr Justice Cavanagh, sitting in the Administrative Court, found for the claimant on two of six grounds, holding that the Home Office had breached its own policy and the public sector equality duty, but rejecting challenges to the underlying detention policy and to Convention rights.

The facts

Ms Davis, a Ghanaian national with limited leave to remain as the primary carer of a British citizen child, was detained at Terminal 5 on 20 August 2023 following a holiday in Spain. A "STOP" marker on the Home Office Warnings Index had been triggered by the refusal of her application for leave under the EU Settlement Scheme Zambrano route in January 2023. That refusal had not invalidated her pre-existing leave to remain on family life grounds, granted three days earlier. The STOP marker should have been removed when she had previously entered the United Kingdom in March 2023, but was not, due to what the court found to be human error. Ms Davis was moved from the Primary Control Point to a Controlled Waiting Area and detained for 30 minutes, the court preferring the Home Office's computer records over the claimant's account of 47 minutes.

Grounds 1A and 1B: policy lawfulness and publication

The claimant argued that the policy of placing negative immigration markers against individuals in her position, which automatically triggered detention regardless of extant leave to remain, was unlawful and should have been published. Cavanagh J rejected both submissions. Applying R (A) v SSHD [2021] UKSC 37, he held that the policy did not positively authorise unlawful conduct in a material and identifiable number of cases. Unlike the policy condemned in R (MXK and SSB) v SSHD [2023] EWHC 1272, where detention was linked to NHS debts wholly irrelevant to border control, a prior immigration refusal could legitimately signal a need for further examination. The inability of Border Force Officers to access full immigration records at the Primary Control Point was, in the court's view, precisely why the statutory power of detention under Schedule 2 to the Immigration Act 1971 existed, and Parliament had clearly envisaged that information gaps would necessitate short detentions. On publication, Cavanagh J held that there were obvious national security reasons against disclosing operational guidance to Border Force Officers, and no inconsistency with any published policy that would have required transparency under R (Lumba) v SSHD [2011] UKSC 12.

Ground 2A: breach of corrective mechanism

The claimant succeeded on the ground that the Home Office had failed to delete the STOP marker following her March 2023 entry, in breach of its own policy. The court found this was attributable to human error and that, absent the failure, the August 2023 detention would not have occurred. Applying Lumba, Cavanagh J held that the claimant had a legitimate expectation that policy would be followed and that the breach rendered the subsequent detention unlawful and constituted false imprisonment.

Ground 3: Convention rights

Neither Article 5 nor Article 8 of the ECHR was found to be engaged. Drawing on the European Court of Human Rights decisions in Gahramanov v Azerbaijan and ZA v Russia (Grand Chamber), the court held that a short detention at a port of entry to clarify a passenger's status did not amount to a deprivation of liberty. Cavanagh J further expressed considerable scepticism that Article 8 could be engaged in circumstances where Article 5 was not, given that the detention was the primary interference and not any form of personal search.

Ground 4: public sector equality duty

The SSHD conceded a continuing breach of section 149 of the Equality Act 2010, confirming that no completed equality impact assessment existed for the exercise of Schedule 2 powers, more than three years after Chamberlain J had identified the same failing in MXK. Cavanagh J declined to withhold declaratory relief simply because an assessment was in progress, noting the absence of urgency since that earlier judgement.

The case will proceed to a consequential matters hearing on remedy.