Jay Sharma, R (on the application of) v The Secretary of State for the Home Department

THE DEPUTY JUDGE: By his claim form filed on 18 November 2025, Mr Sharma applied for judicial review in connection with his arrest by Home Office immigration officers on 29 October 2025 for breaching the conditions of his student visa, also in connection with the seizure of his phone, his subsequent detention until 16 December 2025, and the decision ultimately to cancel his leave to remain as a student.

Mr Sharma is an Indian national and was born on 24 April 2003. On 22 January 2024, he applied for and was granted a student visa to study business management at De Montfort University. The relevant paragraph of the student appendix to the immigration rule states that a student may work 20 hours per week during term time and that full time employment is permitted outside of term time.

Around 6.00 am in the morning of 29 October 2025, immigration enforcement officers attended the Furdeco Home Delivery depot in Walsall in response to intelligence to the effect that the Claimant was in breach of his visa. He was questioned at 6.06 am and said that his current shift was the only shift he had completed that week. He further said that, the week before, he had worked on the Tuesday and Thursday nights from 9.00 pm until 7.00 am, approximately 10 hours each. And that since he had commenced university again at the end of September, he had only been working two 10-hour shifts a week.

Officers put to him that the mobile health app data on his phone, which they had, indicated a pattern of taking steps throughout the night indicative of working night shifts. The Claimant then said he sometimes worked four to five shifts per week, four hours per night, and that he had worked five shifts of four hours that week and had in fact worked on the Monday of that week. He said he had initially denied working earlier that week because he had been scared.

In one of the questions in that interview, the officer said:

During a further interview conducted at 10.50 am, the following questions and answers are apparent:

The date of 29 October 2025 was, of course, within term time. When asked: "What has made you to decide to breach your conditions and work these extra hours?" He said, "It is just so I can afford to pay my fees. My fees are too much."

As I have said, his student leave to enter was cancelled under paragraph 9.8.8 of the Immigration Rules and he was detained in immigration detention. He applied for judicial review on 18 November and, on 14 January 2026, he made a further application for urgent consideration seeking interim relief.

Permission was, however, refused on the papers by HHJ Walden Smith, sitting as a Deputy Judge of the High Court on 18 February 2026. She ordered that the Claimant pay the respondent's costs summarily assessed to be £1,708.

Mr Aslam on behalf of Mr Sharma has renewed the application for permission before me today. According to his skeleton at paragraph 2 and his renewal form 86B, he sought to renew three of the five grounds advanced in the original claim for judicial review. But in fact he has advanced today a fourth ground.

In Ground 1, he argues that the Claimant's phone, on which the mobile health app data was found, was unlawfully searched for and seized in breach of the powers provided by paragraph 25B of Schedule 2 to the Immigration Act 1971.

For her part, the Defendant, who is represented today by Mr Howarth, asserts that the phone was provided voluntarily and relies on the fact that the Claimant signed the interview note made by the immigration officer, which included the passage I have already read out: "you have provided me with access to your mobile phone."

It is notable that the Search of Person record at DB115, page 171 of the bundle, expressly records that a search did take place because the record states:

The text next to the header “Items found” is blank, which might suggest that in fact no phone was seized under paragraph 25B, because were it to have been seized under paragraph 25B such a fact would have been recorded there.

The Claimant further relies on his own statement as well as the statement of a co-worker, Mr Gagandeep Singh. The Claimant states on page 46 of the bundle:

The witness statement of the co-worker, Mr Ganjanteep Singh states, at paragraph 6:

In my judgment, what the officer's assertion in the interview and the witness statements demonstrate is that Mr Sharma was asked, albeit authoritatively, to hand over his phone, and this he did. There is no evidence that the officers said to him “we are now going to search you under paragraph 25B”, or that, when the phone was found, they said “we are seizing this under paragraph 25B”. It is therefore not arguable that the phone was not handed over voluntarily and that paragraph 25B is therefore engaged. It is significant that in neither of those two witness statements does either the Claimant or the co-worker Mr Ganjandeep Singh state that they heard either of the officers refer in any shape or form to paragraph 25B.

It is not, therefore, necessary to consider whether paragraph 25B would have permitted the search for and the seizure of the phone, or whether Mr Aslam is correct to argue that the power is restricted to searches where an officer has reasonable grounds for believing that the arrested person may present a danger to himself or others, or may have items which could be used to assist escape from lawful custody.

I therefore refuse permission on this ground.

In any event, even if I had reached a different view on whether the phone was handed over voluntarily, I would have refused permission for two other reasons. First, as was argued by Mr Howarth for the Secretary of State, the Claimant made clear admissions in the second interview that went far beyond merely addressing the point about what conclusions could be drawn from the mobile health data app. Secondly, in my judgment, the Claimant's arguments over the seizure of the phone are more properly litigated by way of a private law claim for trespass to goods in the county court, if they have a proper basis, given my ruling on Ground two, to which Ground one is entirely parasitic, to which I turn next.

Under Ground 2, Mr Aslam argues that the Defendant decided to cancel the Claimant's leave to enter on an insufficient evidential basis. He says that the interview evidence does not demonstrate a clear, free or consistent admission that the Claimant worked in excess of 20 hours during term time. He says any references to 40 hours were made expressly in the context of non-term time when the Claimant understood he was permitted to work up to that level. He further argues in his written submissions that the Defendant placed decisive weight on step count data extracted from the phone, but did not explain how the step counts equated to paid work, how such data distinguishes working time from commuting or personal movement, or why such material is capable of proving a breach of the immigration rules.

This ground is unarguable. The Defendant plainly relied upon the answers in the second interview as the justification for cancelling leave to enter.

Mr Aslam further argues that, unlawfully, no inquiries were made with the Claimant's employer to obtain rotas, timesheets or payroll records. No inquiries were made of the university to confirm term dates, attendance or timetables and no banking or payroll verification was undertaken in relation to salary or alleged cash payments. This too is unarguable. The officers were under no positive obligation to carry out these inquiries. Furthermore, there would have been no purpose to them, given the Claimant's full admissions.

In his written arguments, Mr Aslam relied on the case of Palisetty v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2014] EWHC 2473 (QB). In that case, the High Court held that in cases involving cancellation of leave and detention, the function of the court "is not limited to deciding whether there was evidence on which the immigration officer … could reasonably come to his decision" but extends to deciding whether the decision was "justified and in accordance with the evidence."

Such statements of principle could scarcely be in dispute. However, those principles are not infringed here because there was ample evidence in the second interview upon which the Defendant could properly and lawfully decide to cancel the leave to enter. I therefore refuse permission on Ground 2.

Ground 3 is a claim that the detention was unlawful because the removal was contrary to the well-known principles in R v Governor of Durham Prison ex p Hardial Singh [1984] WLR 704. Mr Aslam added little in his oral submissions to what was contained in the written arguments. But in those written arguments he referred to the fact that no concrete removal directions had been taken and also that the Defendant, having set removal directions, cancelled them. He suggested that this showed that the removal was never imminent and that in any event the Secretary of State adopted inconsistent positions on removal.

This is a misconceived argument. The test is not whether removal was imminent, but whether it can be affected within a reasonable period. Secondly, the removal directions were naturally cancelled because of the Claimant's filing of a judicial review claim. The claim that detention was unlawful is unarguable. In any event, the Claimant has been released on immigration bail, so there is therefore no ongoing detention to challenge by way of a public law claim to the effect that the detention was unlawful. The proper remedy is for the Claimant to pursue a claim for false imprisonment and damages in the County Court.

Ground 4 is misconceived, and unarguable. There is no public law requirement for a suspected breacher of Immigration Rules to be able to make representations that he is not in breach before he is even arrested. The interviews, also, were not unfair. The Claimant was given a proper and full opportunity to answer the officer's questions and he plainly did so. There was ample evidence in the interviews, particularly the second interview, to justify the cancellation, as I have ruled in relation to Ground 2. There was no obligation to invite further representations before making that decision. Given the clear admissions, absolutely no purpose would have been served.

For all those reasons, I refuse the renewed application for permission.