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Ex-boxer faces fight to stay in the country

10/ 4/2008

A FORMER junior boxer convicted of an attempted armed robbery faces deportation to a country he ‘does not even remember’.

Supporters of Brendan Glenn say it is wrong to deport him to South Africa, a place he left at the age of just six.

Brendan, who is now 29 and a former pupil at the Queen Elizabeth School and a champion teenage boxer with the Langley Spartans, is currently being held by immigration officials who want to send him back.

It is part of a government policy to deport criminals, such as Brendan, who are not UK nationals, and have been convicted of crimes.

Brendan was jailed for 45 months in 2005 for an attempted armed robbery in Bury. It is understood at the time the original sentence was made, it was recommended he should be deported after completion of his time in prison.

He was released earlier this year on parole but after breaching the terms was returned to jail.

He has since been seized by government immigration officials and is being held in a deportation centre in Hampshire.

But his British-born mother Julie Stone is now pleading with immigration officials to let her son , who she says is British, stay in the UK despite him never applying for citizenship.

"It’s ridiculous," she said. "Brendan doesn’t know the South African way of life at all, he was only six when we moved and he can barely even remember living there.

"I know he’s been in trouble in the past, but he has served his time and deserves a second chance."

Miss Stone, who now lives on Barleyfield Walk, Langley, moved to South Africa in the early 1970s where she lived for more than a decade before returning to Britain.

While out in South Africa she met Brendan’s father who abandoned pregnant Julie when she revealed she was carrying his child.

Miss Stone raised Brendan in her adopted country until she moved the family back to her homeland in 1985.

But upon their return to the UK, Miss Stone failed to register Brendan for UK citizenship, meaning he is not an official British subject, despite spending the majority of his life in the UK.

And after being convicted for an attempted armed robbery, immigration officials have moved to remove Brendan to the land he was born in.

But his family have vowed to fight to keep him in the UK, and have won the backing of Middleton and Heywood MP Jim Dobbin.

Mr Dobbin said: "They might as well send him to Australia – he knows as much about that country as he does South Africa. All his family live over here and he’s been here since he was six.

"I understand he won’t be deported until the 26 April and in the meantime we are working on the case."

Mr Dobbin added he has written to the immigration department and the Home Office for help with Brendan’s case.

A spokesman for the UK Border Agency said: "We believe that foreign criminals should be held to account.

"Foreign nationals must obey the laws of this country in the same way as everybody else. Anyone who commits a criminal offence in the UK faces the same legal processes.

"Anyone breaking the law, whether they are a British citizen or a foreign national, can expect prosecution and, where appropriate, a custodial sentence. We have also made it perfectly clear that we will seek to deport Foreign Nationals who have committed a serious crime in the UK.".