Kamal Ghorui
A paedophile migrant who did not tell UK authorities about a conviction for abusing a five-year-old has won the right to appeal against being deported, reports the Daily Mail. An immigration judge ruled that 29-year-old Edi Cardoso Ramos made an “honest mistake” when he failed to mention his criminal past while applying for leave to remain in the UK. Ramos had been convicted of a serious sexual offence against a five-year-old in Portugal in 2014, receiving a three-year suspended sentence.Ramos moved to the UK in 2018, a year after his suspended sentence had expired. When he applied for leave to remain in 2020, he denied having any prior convictions, later claiming he believed the form only asked about convictions in the UK.His conviction came to light in 2024 after he was caught with a prostitute in the UK and received a police caution. A routine check then revealed his 2014 offence, and the Home Office began deportation proceedings.Ramos successfully challenged the deportation, with Judge Paul Lodato concluding that the threat he represents is not a present threat. The judge said: “Does (Ramos) represent a genuine, present and sufficiently serious threat to ‘a fundamental interest of society’? It was agreed that if I conclude that he does not, his appeal falls to be allowed.”The court heard that Ramos committed the offence in 2012 when he was 19 and was sentenced in 2014. The suspended sentence did not activate because he complied with its requirements. The Home Office argued that Ramos posed a risk to women and girls in the UK, but the judge found that soliciting a prostitute does not indicate a continuation of the type of offending for which he was convicted in Portugal.Judge Lodato accepted Ramos’s explanation for not disclosing his conviction, saying: “The form asked him: ‘Have you ever been convicted of a criminal offence, or arrested or charged with an offence that you are on trial for or awaiting trial?’. (Ramos) accepted that he answered ‘No’. (His) explanation is that he understood the question to be asking him whether he had been convicted of any criminal offences in the United Kingdom. I accept (Ramos’s) explanation as being credible. I find that he made an honest mistake when he answered the question about his previous convictions and that his failure to disclose the material fact of his 2014 conviction in Portugal was not dishonest.”The judge also acknowledged that Ramos’s non-disclosure raised questions about honesty but emphasised that it did not indicate a present threat. “I therefore do not consider (Ramos’s) non-disclosure of his 2014 conviction when he completed his 2020 leave to remain application indicates that (Ramos) is a present threat,” he said.As a result, Ramos’s appeal will be heard from scratch, giving him the chance to fight against deportation while living in the UK.
