Cara Delevingne has just backed a change.org campaignto prevent a 19-year-old schoolgirl called Yashika Bageerathi from being deported without her family. Cara’s come out in full support of Yashika, who faces being sent back to Mauritius without her family later this week if the Home Office continue to refuse her appeal to stay in the UK.
Yashika moved to London in 2012 with her family after escaping an ‘extremely dangerous’ relative but, as a 19-year-old, she is now considered an adult and her appeal to stay in the UK is being considered separately from her mother, brother and sister’s by the Home Office. So far, Yashika’s family have not been informed about the outcome of their requests and so are free to stay in the UK, while she is being forced to leave. Cara was obviously moved by the sad story and Tweeted:
Yashika has been offered a place at* Queen Mary University* in London to study maths but is currently being held at Yarl’s Wood Immigration Centrein Bedfordshire. She claims she was detained without warning after going to a weekly appointment with Home Office officials who rejected her request for asylum. Yashika told the Evening Standard:
‘I’m really scared. They would find me easily. They were very violent towards me and my mum since I was a child. I didn’t have any friends out there because of that situation. I never thought I would have so many friends as I do now. I came to know what it’s like to interact with people. I was a girl who never had a voice but here I am free.’
If one further legal application fails, Yashika will have to be deported within days with only her school bag, a handful of loose change she took to her Home Office appointment and the clothes on her back. Yesterday, around 100 pupils from the Oasis Academy Hadley, where Yashika is due to take her A Levels in June, staged a protest outside the Home Office. If, like Cara (and us), you’ve been moved by Yashika’s story, you can sign a petition to stop her deportation here.
Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophiecullinane
Picture: @caradelevingne
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.