The wife of a British man detained by police in Stockholm on Tuesday ahead of a threatened deportation has pleaded with Andy Burnham to get involved in the Brexit catastrophe unfolding for many British citizens in Sweden. Charles, who does not want to be fully identified, and his Swedish wife, Lily, were summoned to the police station at 10am on Tuesday, where he was told he would be held at a detention centre and deported within the next two weeks. Lily, who is a lawyer, was told to go home and get his passport despite her protests that there was a court process under way appealing the deportation order.
They don’t care about human rights. This is a European country, but it looks like Sweden is like somewhere like Afghanistan,” she said. Lily met her husband in the UK after starting a law degree in London in 2010.
She now works for the local authority in Stockholm and returned to Sweden in 2015, with her soon-to-be husband joining her in 2017, three years before Brexit. A former business consultant, now retired, Charles made an application to remain in the country before the deadline for applications after Brexit. His application was rejected two years later in 2022 and the family have been fighting deportation ever since with “six or seven” appeals, said Lily.
They didn’t say anything about deportation or to bring passports. She has pleaded with Andy Burnham, the UK prime minister, to intervene. How many British families have to suffer in Sweden before Andy Burnham gets involved?
How many families have to leave their homes, be forced into selling their houses? They should threaten the trade agreement,” she added. Charles’s case comes amid growing controversy over Sweden’s approach to the withdrawal agreement, which is supposed to have protected EU citizens in the UK and British citizens settled in the bloc before Brexit.
Among those threatened with removal in the past month are 78-year-old British widow Joyce Thomas, who has been in the country for 21 years, and George Mason, a 74-year-old man in dementia care who has been in the country for 24 years. A 34-year-old man revealed this week he was deported from Sweden in January despite having been in the country since he was 10 and being married to a Swedish woman in Gothenburg. Two years ago another British woman, Kathleen Poole, was threatened with deportation because she had not provided financial statements to the Migration Agency while in full-time dementia care.
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