Refugees Tortured in Sudan Are Now Fighting the Home Office in Court

Two Sudanese asylum seekers who say they suffer nightmares and flashbacks from torture in their home country have launched the first legal challenge against one of Labour's most controversial immigration policies. Their target is Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood's plan to slash refugee leave to remain from five years to just 30 months, while making refugees wait a full twenty years before they can apply for permanent settlement.

The case, brought by solicitors at Duncan Lewis, argues the policy is both indirectly discriminatory and would fail entirely in its stated aim of deterring people from making dangerous Channel crossings to reach the UK.

What Mahmood Is Proposing

Under the new plans, refugees granted protection in the UK will no longer receive five years of leave as a matter of course. Instead, they will be granted 30 months at a time, with their refugee status reassessed repeatedly across a twenty-year period before they become eligible for settlement. In practice, a refugee would face eight separate reassessments before they could even begin to qualify for permanent residence.

Mahmood has also announced plans to restrict family reunion rights. Refugees will now need to demonstrate they can financially support their spouses and children under 18 before family members are allowed to join them in the UK.

In a policy paper published in November 2025, the Home Secretary accused even "genuine refugees" of shopping around across the continent for the most attractive place to seek asylum. The UN's refugee agency, UNHCR, pushed back sharply in December 2025, calling the planned changes deeply concerning and warning they would create greater uncertainty for refugees while negatively affecting integration and social cohesion.

The Legal Challenge

Manini Menon, the solicitor at Duncan Lewis representing the two Sudanese claimants, was direct in her assessment. She said the Home Secretary's position that the policy would deter small boat arrivals and filter out those who do not genuinely need protection is fundamentally flawed. She pointed to evidence from Denmark and Australia, where granting temporary refugee status led to worse mental and physical health outcomes, disrupted social integration and pushed refugees into poverty and economic instability.

Australia, which previously ran a temporary protection system, ultimately replaced it with permanent residency. In 2024, Denmark withdrew just 48 refugee status grants following review, and Norway withdrew only 29, suggesting the reassessment model carries enormous administrative cost for minimal practical return.

The figures around Sudanese asylum seekers make the discrimination argument particularly sharp. In 2025, 96% of Sudanese asylum claims in the UK resulted in a grant of protection. Against that backdrop, forcing Sudanese refugees through an eight-stage reassessment process over twenty years looks less like a security measure and more like an obstacle course designed to delay rights rather than protect the public.

The Home Office Response

A Home Office spokesperson defended the policy, arguing that Britain's asylum system stands as a relative outlier in Europe, with claims rising here even as they fall across the continent. The spokesperson said protection would always be provided to those facing genuine danger, but that those who have entered illegally and can safely return home will be required to do so. The statement also promised new safe and legal routes into the country with a faster path to lifetime settlement for those in genuine need.

Critics will note the contradiction. If those on the new core protection route face twenty years of reassessment before settlement, and family reunion has been made conditional on financial proof that many refugees will struggle to demonstrate, it is difficult to see where the promised faster path actually leads.

The legal challenge is in its early stages. But with 200,000 responses to the government's settlement consultation and the UN refugee agency already on record in opposition, the policy faces significant pressure from multiple directions before a single rule change is formally enacted.