Pregnant Nigerian gets temporary injunction on deportation

A heavily pregnant Nigerian woman who is due to marry before Christmas has secured a temporary High Court injunction preventing her deportation.

Lawyers for the woman obtained the order yesterday after arguing that deportation would interfere with her right to bodily integrity.

However, Ms Kedirat Balogun, who is over seven months pregnant, must remain in Mountjoy jail, at least until the court considers the case tomorrow. Her doctor has stated that the travel involved in deportation could pose a risk to her unborn child.

She was detained by Garda last weekend after emerging from a post office near her home in Dundalk. Immigration officials, who planned to enforce the original deportation order, transferred Ms Balogun to Mountjoy, from where she was due to be deported yesterday.

Ms Balogun and her partner Mr Kunle Akende, both from Ogun State in Nigeria, say they plan to marry in Dundalk on December 23rd. Children born in Ireland automatically become Irish citizens, regardless of the nationality of their parents, and their parents are normally given residency rights.

However, the Department of Justice has recently begun legal action to deport a number of failed asylum-seekers with Irish-born children.

Ms Balogun came to Ireland last year. She applied for asylum on the grounds of ethnic persecution and a fear that she would be forced to undergo female circumcision. However, her application was rejected and she was served with a deportation order in March 2001.

Last Saturday, she was stopped "by chance" after Dundalk Garda found she was in possession of a friend's passport, according to her solicitor, Mr Con Pendred.

Mr Pendred said the case raised major constitutional issues, and had "nothing to do with immigration". In a similar case last week, another Nigerian woman obtained a reprieve from deportation on the basis of the constitutional right to life of the unborn.