Home Office grants Indefinite Leave to Remain to survivor of domestic abuse following judicial review

Zehrah Hasan successfully represented a survivor of domestic violence in her judicial review against the Home Office’s decision to refuse her Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) under the Immigration Rules for Victims of Domestic Abuse (Appendix VDA).

The claimant is an Indian national who had survived several extreme and complex forms of domestic violence at the hands of multiple perpetrators in India and in the UK, including transnational marriage abandonment and domestic servitude. She had been recognised as a survivor of modern slavery by the National Referral Mechanism (NRM) in the UK, but notwithstanding this, the Home Office refused her application for ILR.

Judicial Review Proceedings

Zehrah was instructed in her claim for judicial review lodged last year. Whilst the claimant had an Administrative Review ongoing, this was subject to unreasonable delay and her circumstances necessitated bringing a public law challenge. Notably, the claimant was at risk of being evicted from her safe house accommodation whilst her immigration status remained precarious, because she had been recognised as a victim of modern slavery.

In particular, the case revealed the Home Office’s continued failure to treat transnational marriage abandonment as a form of domestic abuse in itself, despite the amended Immigration Rules on ILR VDA introduced on 31 January 2024 and accompanying guidance, in light of the High Court’s decision in AM v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2022] EWHC 2591 (Admin) (in which another member of Chambers acted).

In AM, the High Court relied on a definition of transnational marriage abandonment formulated by the President of the Family Division in 2017, which Zehrah had worked on at the time whilst in a previous role at a domestic abuse charity. In AM, Mrs Justice Lieven described transnational marriage abandonment as (at [§78]) “… a very serious form of domestic abuse, often involving serious physical and psychological harm”.

Drawing upon their shared expertise in domestic violence cases, Zehrah and Camille were able to prepare a detailed judicial review claim, challenging the Home Office’s failure to recognise the hallmarks of domestic abuse present in the claimant’s circumstances and unreasonably dismissing cogent supporting evidence, including from a specialist domestic violence charity which supports racialised and migrant women.

After the judicial review was filed, the Home Office agreed to settle the claim, agreed to take into account the arguments raised in the claimant’s grounds when making a fresh decision, and agreed to expedite the decision.

The claimant was subsequently granted ILR under Appendix VDA at the end of 2025, providing her with long-awaited stability and safety after prolonged experiences of abuse.

Safety not Suspicion

This case underscored the ways in which the Home Office often denies the lived experiences of migrant survivors of domestic abuse and views them with suspicion, rather than enabling them a pathway to safety.

Judicial guidance and the Home Office’s own policy is clear; survivors frequently will struggle to provide documentary evidence of abuse and there are systemic issues, such as the risk of immigration enforcement, police violence, and wider deficiencies in the criminal justice system for domestic violence cases.

This means migrant survivors can face additional barriers to pursuing their perpetrators through the police and courts, especially when abusers leverage their precarious immigration status to subject them to coercive control. As a result, evidence from supporting organisations should be given proper weight and the survivor’s traumatic history and often compounded experiences of abuse must be taken into account.

Additionally, it is vital that the Home Office and other agencies are able to recognise different forms of abuse, including transnational marriage abandonment; where a victim’s partner or their family members abandon or strand the visa-dependent victim abroad, usually without financial resources and with the aim of preventing their return to the UK.

The Home Office’s own guidance is clear that where it is the abandonment itself which marks the breakdown of the relationship, the requirement under Appendix VDA that the breakdown of the relationship is due to domestic abuse will be met.

It is further acknowledged in the Home Office’s guidance that the perpetrator will frequently mislead the abandoned partner about the intention of travel, victims will usually have documents removed from their possession, and the perpetrator often contacts the Home Office to curtail the abandoned partner’s permission to stay without their knowledge once they are overseas.

In this case, the claimant’s circumstances bore the hallmarks of transnational marriage abandonment in line with the factors above, but the Home Office failed to follow their own guidance and recognise these features in making the initial decision on ILR.

The Home Office also failed to recognise that domestic servitude is a form of domestic abuse, even with a positive Conclusive Grounds decision from the NRM that the claimant had experienced this during her marriage.

The positive outcome in this case and early settlement of the judicial review ensured the claimant was finally able to obtain stability and security in the UK, without being re-traumatised by lengthy and protracted legal proceedings.

However, it also highlighted the importance of ensuring that complex and intersecting forms of domestic abuse, and the particular experiences of migrant women, are properly understood by both legal representatives and decision-makers.

Only then can migrant survivors, who have lived through such significant trauma and violence, have their cases meaningfully advanced and considered.

See the Step Up Migrant Women campaign for more information about this issue.

If you think you may be affected by any of the issues raised in this article, please seek support from the National Domestic Abuse Helpline.