Could Corby human traffickers be deported now legal proceedings are complete?
The final court hearings against a duo who brought vulnerable people to Corby and exploited them have now taken place.
After the proceedings against them concluded at the end of last week, it means the involvement of brutal slave masters Lyda Petraviciute and Laisvydas Urbaitis with the court system is now at an end.
And as we published a story this morning to let out readers know that Petraviciute would have to pay her victims compensation totalling £15,000 from her criminal proceeds, our readers wanted to know one thing – would the ‘brutal’ pair be deported?
One commenter on our Facebook page said: “Deport them both to their home nation please ,we shouldn't have to deal with people like this.”
Petraviciute and Urbaitis committed crimes that were almost unbelievable in the modern age. They lured their victims to Corby on the promise of factory jobs, but when they started working they took their passports, took control of their bank accounts and stole their money, leaving them pennies to live on.
The pair were jailed for nine years after a three-month trial in 2022. They will have to serve at least two thirds of that in prison before they become eligible for release.
But the rules around deportation of criminals are not straightforward, they are complicated and nothing happens automatically. The government this week pledged to speed up the process of deportation for those who commit serious crimes, with many now eligible for immediate deportation.
However, this only applies to ‘foreign’ criminals. The pair’s immigration status was not mentioned in open court and the Home Office has a long-standing policy of not commenting publicly on specific cases.
Petraviciute and Urbaitis are both from Lithuania. Patraviciute arrived in Corby in 2005, and Urbaitis in 2009. Because they were from the European Union and arrived before 2020, it’s likely the pair have settled status which normally affords some protection from deportation.
But because their crimes were partly committed before 2020 and were given a prison term of more than a year, it means that the Home Office could apply pre-Brexit rules to them.
If the Home Office decides that deportation of the pair is in the interests of ‘the public good, public health or public security’, they could ask the Secretary of State to make a deportation order. Any order would be subject to appeal.
Recent pressure on the authorities means that the government is more likely to apply for deportation orders than in previous years.
Any decision would be balanced by the length of time the pair have spent in the UK and whether they have permanent residence.
A Home Office spokesman told the Northants Telegraph: “It is our longstanding policy not to comment on individual cases, but when foreign nationals commit serious crimes in our country, we will always do everything in our power to deport them after they have completed their sentence.
"This Government has already deported almost 5,200 foreign national offenders in our first year in office, a 14 per cent increase on the previous year, and we will continue to do everything we can to remove these vile criminals from our streets.”