Mina Dich v Secretary of State for the Home Department: High Court dismisses judicial review of interim removal and detention decisions

In a judgement handed down on 10 March 2026, Mr Justice Murray dismissed the claim brought by Mina Dich, a French national who pleaded guilty in 2018 to an offence under section 5 of the Terrorism Act 2006, having assisted her daughter in preparations for a terrorist attack in April 2017. Having served the custodial element of her extended determinate sentence, Dich was detained under immigration powers from 8 February 2024 and made the subject of a deportation order on 28 March 2024.

The claim challenged two certification decisions made under regulation 33 of the Immigration (European Economic Area) Regulations 2016 and regulation 16 of the Immigration (Citizens' Rights Appeals) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020, as well as the subsequent supplemental decision of 10 June 2024 and the decision to detain. Dich also applied for permission to rely on fresh expert evidence addressing her mental health and the risks posed by removal. The court declined to admit it, finding it did not satisfy the test in R (Law Society) v Lord Chancellor [2018] EWHC 2094 (Admin) and was not reasonably required to resolve the claim.

On the Essa principle — requiring that a decision-maker consider an EU national's comparative prospects of rehabilitation when assessing proportionality of an expulsion measure — Murray J held that there was no principled basis for confining it to final deportation decisions. Interim removal is capable of engaging the principle as a matter of general application. However, the judge was satisfied that the Secretary of State had, on a fair reading of the March decision letter and supplemental decision taken as a whole, addressed the comparative rehabilitative prospects between the United Kingdom and France and had not erred in her approach.

A related argument, that the defendant had failed separately and expressly to consider the "risk now" presented by Dich to the UK public when making the certification decisions, was also rejected. Murray J accepted that such a consideration was properly part of the overall factual assessment and found no stand-alone public law error.

The court similarly rejected the argument that Article 28 of the Citizens' Rights Directive — conferring enhanced protection against expulsion for long-resident EU nationals — had been disapplied to the certification decisions. Although the judge indicated that interim removal is a form of expulsion capable of engaging Article 28, he was satisfied the defendant had in substance applied the requisite elevated threshold of "serious grounds of public policy or public security" when arriving at her decisions.

A further ground — that the timing of any interim removal, had it proceeded, would have rendered it disproportionate given the proximity of the First-tier Tribunal appeal hearing — was declared academic. The Secretary of State had elected not to remove Dich pending that hearing, which proceeded on 2–4 and 8 July 2025 and resulted in the dismissal of her appeals on 12 September 2025.

On the lawfulness of detention, the court found no public law error capable of vitiating the authority to detain and was satisfied the Hardial Singh principles were met. The claim was dismissed in its entirety.

The intervener, the AIRE Centre, had submitted that any decision to expel an EU national — whether before or after appeal — constitutes an "expulsion decision" engaging Article 28(2), and that to hold otherwise would deny a key protection to EU nationals throughout potentially protracted appeal proceedings. Murray J found it unnecessary to resolve the point definitively, having concluded that the defendant had in any event applied the correct test.

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