My best friend Baba is facing deportation. The Home Office has forgotten about people’s well-being in their campaign to stop immigration

I first met Baba 10 years ago when I smashed him at table tennis during an event for unaccompanied minors, put on by the Refugee Council.

Baba wasn’t great at table tennis, but he was an excellent volunteer – counselling children facing the UK asylum process alone.

Having experienced it himself, he knows how traumatic it can be. But instead of focusing on the bad, his infectious and ridiculously high-pitched giggle always forced people to laugh with him.

We were 20 years old then and Baba has since become like my brother, as well as a massive part of my whole family. Christmases and birthdays; whatever the occasion, he’s there with us.

But those giggles have become less common.

Especially as he now approaches his last chance of appealing against forced removal from the UK – the only place he knows as home.

Originally from Togo, Baba’s lived in the UK for 16 years. He grew up here, his friends are here, and his family is here.

Not just us, but also his only real family including his sister and beloved nieces. He no longer has any contact with anyone in Togo, a country he barely remembers.

Baba’s UK struggles started the second he set foot in the country.

His sister had been granted asylum the year before, but authorities rejected the fact they were related.

They even refused to believe he was 15, which prevented him from legally being treated as an unaccompanied minor. When his age was finally accepted, it was only to pull him out of school days before his A-Level exams and to detain him when he turned 18, forcing him to miss his exams completely.

This mishandling of Baba’s case at the very beginning – by overstretched legal representatives and authorities falsely accusing him of lying – has tarnished his life for 16 painful years. Ever since, he’s been fighting to overturn this initial distrust.

The psychological toll that it’s taken on him has been hard to watch, like witnessing a slow-motion train crash and being powerless to stop it.

Try to imagine what it’s like living under the constant threat of deportation at a moment’s notice, possibly even in the dead of night.

The inner turmoil of watching your friends’ lives progress while yours is stuck, paralysed in time, barred from even the simplest freedoms that the rest of us take for granted.

Such as working, studying, renting a flat – let alone life’s enjoyments, if ever there’s money left for it.

Baba would give anything to work the worst job you can imagine. But he’s not allowed while his status remains unresolved, so he’s forced to live off the charity of his sister and friends like myself.

It’s heartbreaking to watch such a waste of human potential.

I’ve had a front row seat for a decade and still can only guess what it’s truly like for him, so extreme is the difference between his life and anyone who has the luxury of getting frustrated about such frivolous things like a late bus.

There’s literally nobody else I know who could withstand a fraction of the psychological pressure that Baba has endured.

It’s amazing we get to hear his giggles at all.

But his mental health has not been immune, and has deteriorated to such a point where he’s been diagnosed with depression and contemplated suicide.

The obvious question you might be asking yourself is surely, ‘Why not just go back?’. And it’s a fair question, I’ve asked it too.

But back to where?

Togo is his country in documentation only; he doesn’t even speak the local language.

Baba’s life, home, heart, and family are all here – and that’s why he continues to hope against hope that this can be resolved, regardless of the suffering such hope entails.

From Brexit to the Windrush scandal, immigration continues to dominate news and politics.

There are many good reasons for wanting to control immigration, and I empathise with people at the Home Office who are facing so many external pressures to clamp down. They’re not in an easy position, surrounded by such swirling and polarised forces.

Sadly what gets lost along the way is individuals, and common sense.

Here we have an individual desperate to contribute, and instead of collecting a decade of taxes, we’ve opted to relegate him to the sidelines of society.

Even more perplexing, the UK recently admitted the country cannot recruit enough fruit pickers, even from EU countries like Romania or Bulgaria.

Their response is to offer lifetime citizenship for any EU citizen who comes to the UK for a summer’s work if they come before December 2020. So Baba – barred from working for 16 years – is again left out of the game that nobody is playing, or even wants to play.

If that’s common sense, then maybe I don’t have it.

Had we met Baba earlier in his life, my parents would have adopted, sponsored or vouched for him. But none of these options are available to us.

All we can do is support his final legal challenge, and that’s exactly what we’re trying to do by raising enough money to pay for legal costs.

The response has been incredible so far, showing just how deeply Baba’s story, and its wider implications, strike a chord with so many people.

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