Under the Dublin Regulations, the UK can refuse to process your asylum application. If you are an adult and you claim asylum in the UK, and the Home Office proves that you have travelled through a safe country on your journey to the UK, they will “transfer” your case and say that you have to return to that safe country (the ‘third country’) to have your asylum claim heard. The evidence they usually use is that your fingerprints have been taken in the other country, and are stored in the Eurodac database.

You may be able to challenge this if you can demonstrate that your human rights would be breached by removal to that country. Currently, the only country that people cannot be returned to under Dublin for human rights reasons is Greece.

The human rights situation for asylum seekers in Hungary is bad, and getting worse. Lawyers in the UK are challenging Dublin returns to Hungary on these grounds. An important court judgement which may affect some or all people facing return to Hungary is awaited. Some lawyers have been successful in obtaining an injunction (part of a judicial review) for their client to stop a removal until the judgement is published.

If you have a lawyer, you need to ask them to apply for an injunction (as part of a judicial review), to ‘stay’ your removal while waiting for the decision in the ‘lead cases’ of Ibrahimi and Abasi. This decision may not be known until June. If you don’t have a lawyer, you need to get one, fast.