Sabbagh-Parry v Secretary of State for the Home Office: deportation challenge refused as premature

Mr Justice Murray refused permission to apply for judicial review in R (Sabbagh-Parry) v Secretary of State for the Home Office & Anor [2026] EWHC 501 (Admin), dismissing a serving prisoner's challenge to deportation proceedings, his refusal of home detention curfew (HDC), and his refusal of Category D prisoner status. The judgement, handed down on 9 March 2026, also refused an extension of time and dismissed an application for interim relief.

Ahmed Sabbagh-Parry, born in 1985, entered the United Kingdom in 1997 as a dependant of his mother and was granted indefinite leave to remain in 2006. He has accumulated a significant criminal history, culminating in convictions at Liverpool Crown Court in April 2022 for two counts of conspiracy to supply Class A drugs and one count of conspiracy to supply Class B drugs, for which he was sentenced to 19 years' imprisonment — subsequently reduced to 17 years by the Court of Appeal in February 2024.

Following that conviction, the Secretary of State for the Home Department served a Stage 1 deportation notice in December 2024. The Secretary of State for Justice subsequently refused both Category D status and HDC eligibility on the basis of the outstanding deportation proceedings.

Sabbagh-Parry, representing himself via prison video-link, challenged all three decisions. His grounds encompassed assertions of statelessness (his father being Palestinian), Article 8 ECHR rights in respect of his four British children and extensive UK ties, alleged procedural unfairness, and what he described as misleading information provided by the Home Office to the Prison Service.

The court's reasoning

Murray J identified the central issue as whether the claim carried arguable merit sufficient to justify the grant of permission. On the challenge to the deportation proceedings, he held the claim to be premature: no Stage 2 decision had yet been made, and the claimant retained an adequate alternative remedy in the form of the statutory appeal process once such a decision was reached. The assertion of unlawful delay in reaching the Stage 2 decision was considered but found to have no reasonable prospect of success, even had the claimant been permitted to amend his grounds to plead it formally.

The claims against the Secretary of State for Justice fell away as a consequence. Both the HDC refusal and the Category D refusal had been made in reliance on the extant deportation proceedings under the applicable statutory and policy frameworks. Without a viable public law challenge to those proceedings, the claimant could not establish that the second defendant had acted unlawfully. The argument that "exceptional circumstances" warranted a different outcome was found to depend almost entirely on the same objections to the deportation proceedings that had already failed.

On extension of time, the court accepted that procedural confusion between the Administrative Court and the Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) had not been the claimant's fault, and noted the constraints of litigating from custody. However, given the absence of any arguable merit in the underlying grounds, no purpose was served by granting the extension.

Costs

The defendants were awarded their costs, summarily assessed at £3,993 for the first defendant and £5,385.50 for the second. Murray J noted that the civil costs regime applicable in public law proceedings does not, in principle, permit the paying party's means to be taken into account, notwithstanding Sabbagh-Parry's indication that he could not meet any order made against him.

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