‘Honest mistake’: Migrants convicted of child sex offenses avoid deportation in UK, judge says ‘not a serious threat’

A pedophile immigrant convicted of abusing a five-year-old without telling British authorities has won the right to appeal against his deportation, the Daily Mail reports. An immigration judge has ruled that Edi Cardoso Ramos, 29, made an “honest error” by failing to mention his criminal record when applying for permission to stay in the UK. In 2014, Ramos was sentenced to three years’ probation in Portugal for serious sexual assault of a five-year-old child.Ramos moved to the UK in 2018, a year after his suspended sentence expired. When he applied for leave to remain in 2020, he denied any previous convictions and later claimed he thought the form only asked about convictions in the UK.His conviction came to light in 2024 after he was arrested for soliciting sex with a prostitute in the UK and given a police caution. Routine checks later revealed his 2014 crimes and the Home Office began deportation proceedings.Ramos successfully challenged deportation, with Judge Paul Lodato concluding that the threat he represented was not a current one. The judge said: “Does (Ramos) pose a real, present and sufficiently serious threat to the ‘fundamental interests of society’? It is agreed that if I had concluded that he did not, then his appeal would have been allowed.”The court heard Ramos committed the offense in 2012, when he was 19, and was sentenced in 2014. Probation was not initiated because he complied with its requirements. The Home Office argued that Ramos posed a risk to British women and girls, but the judge found that soliciting prostitutes did not indicate that the type of crime for which he was convicted in Portugal was continuing.Judge Lodato accepted Ramos’ explanation for not disclosing the conviction, saying: “The form asked him: ‘Have you ever been convicted of a criminal offense, or been arrested or charged for an offense for which you are on trial or awaiting trial?'” (Ramos) admitted his answer was “no.” (His) explanation was that he understood the question to be asking whether he had been convicted of any criminal offense in the UK. I think (Ramos’) explanation is believable. I found that he made an honest error in answering questions about his previous convictions and that his failure to disclose material facts about his 2014 conviction in Portugal was not dishonest. “The judge also acknowledged that Ramos’s non-disclosure of his identity raised questions about honesty, but stressed that it did not indicate a threat. “Therefore, I do not believe that (Ramos’s) failure to disclose the 2014 conviction after completing his 2020 residence permit application is an indication that (Ramos) is a current threat,” he said.Ramos’ appeal will therefore be heard from scratch, giving him the chance to fight deportation while living in the UK.