The High Court has quashed a deportation order made against a Somali doctor who has been "badly failed" since her arrival here.
The 32-year-old woman has been homeless since May 2016 and unable to work since then.
Ms Justice Tara Burns said the founders of the international protection system in Europe would take the view that "we, as a people" had badly failed the doctor.
The court heard she came here in February 2016. In May 2016, she was required to leave her direct provision accommodation after it was decided she could not seek permission to remain here because she had previously secured refugee status in Hungary.
The judge said the woman had qualified as a doctor in Ukraine and then returned to her native Somalia to work as a junior doctor in a hospital in Mogadishu.
She was subjected to serious threats from a jihadist fundamentalist group for working and not wearing a full burqa.
The woman feared for her life and fled to Ukraine on a student visa. When that expired, friends paid smugglers to get her to Hungary where she was required to apply for asylum or be deported to Ukraine where she faced jail.
She secured refugee status in Hungary in 2015, but was unable to get work because she had no accommodation.
She was living in homeless shelters with men and women with significant addiction issues. She said she felt isolated and alone, as a young Muslim woman, and lived in constant fear of violence, including sexual violence and for her life.
Ms Justice Burns said the Minister for Justice had not disputed the woman’s account.
When she came here in 2016, she was told her asylum application could not be considered because she already had refugee status in another EU country.
Her only income is €50 every two weeks from St Vincent de Paul. She works voluntarily as a translator for members of the Muslim and Somali community, assists them with medical appointments and also works as a volunteer with the Irish Cancer Society.
In 2017, she applied for permission to remain and her solicitors were told the way to go about that was to wait for a proposal to deport to issue and to make representations in response to that.
A proposal to deport issued in June 2017 and she made representations which were not responded to despite several reminders from her solicitors issued during 2017, 2018 and 2019.
Her representations included "excellent" references from academics and medical personnel in Cork where she was staying, the judge noted. A medical report in 2019 stated she had been diagnosed with a major depressive disorder with a strong sense of despair and hopelessness about her situation.
She took High Court proceedings after being notified in February 2020 of a proposal to deport her to Hungary in the interests of public policy and the common good in maintaining the integrity of the asylum and immigration system.
In her challenge, she argued, she was at risk of inhuman and degrading treatment if deported to Hungary and the Minister had failed to properly consider country of origin information (COI) relating to Hungary’s treatment of asylum seekers.
In her judgment, Ms Justice Burns held the Minister incorrectly assessed the COI and failed to consider whether the presumption the woman’s fundamental rights would be upheld in Hungary had been rebutted.
The Minister also failed to properly consider the woman’s employment prospects here, she found.
The deportation order was vitiated by those errors and must be quashed, she ruled.
Given those findings, the judge said she was not addressing the woman’s "impressive" argument the Minister erred in finding she would not be subject to inhuman and degrading treatment in Hungary if deported there.
She also granted the woman her legal costs.
