UK Tribunal Rules Home Office Must Rethink Deporting Male Albanian Trafficking Victims

A panel of three senior judges in the Upper Tribunal — the highest tier of the UK's immigration and asylum court system — has ruled that the Home Office can be blocked from deporting many young male trafficking victims to Albania. The judgment, issued as new country guidance that binds future decision-making, was reported on 21 August 2026. It accepts an asylum appeal brought by a 21-year-old Albanian trafficking victim and finds he remains at 'real risk' from his traffickers even five years after his initial exploitation.

The claimant was first exploited by an Albanian gang in Belgium at age 16, then sold to another gang that brought him to the UK to cultivate cannabis plants. He was recognised as a victim of trafficking but initially denied asylum. The tribunal's acceptance of his appeal overturns that denial and establishes precedent for similar cases The Guardian.

The new country guidance requires the Home Office to consider specific conditions in Albania before deciding whether to send male trafficking victims back. The judgment found that while Albania has made progress on tackling corruption, it remains a widespread problem. There are no dedicated shelters for adult male trafficking victims, and the risk of retrafficking upon return is significant The Guardian.

Albanians were the most common nationality forcibly removed from the UK in the five years to 2026, with 2,247 deported in the 12 months to the end of March 2026, accounting for a quarter of enforced returns The Guardian. In 2022, 4,107 Albanian males were referred to UK services over potential trafficking compared with 502 women; in 2023 the figures were 3,463 males and 588 females The Guardian. Albanian males have overtaken females as the major victims of trafficking to the UK, with males trafficked into the drugs trade as drug distributors or cannabis farm 'gardeners', while females were previously trafficked into the UK sex industry The Guardian.

Islington Law Centre, which represented the claimant, highlighted gang practices including videoing sexual abuse of child trafficking victims and threatening to release the footage, showing videos of victims' loved ones in Albania, and inflicting physical injuries such as broken bones on children and young people. Esme Madill, a solicitor at the centre specialising in representing young Albanian trafficking victims, welcomed the judgment as 'measured and based on significant detailed evidence about trafficking of boys and young men by organised Albanian criminal networks' The Guardian.

The ruling builds on the case 'AL and others v Secretary of State for the Home Department', which was subject to an anonymity order Judiciary UK. The judgment states that, as reported over the past five years, human traffickers exploit both domestic and foreign victims in Albania. The tribunal also held that victims of trafficking from Albania may qualify as members of a 'Particular Social Group' under the Refugee Convention — meaning they could meet the definition of a refugee because traffickers target them as a distinct group. Human rights appeals may also be allowed on the ground that the Secretary of State has unlawfully failed to properly consider a person's status as a victim of trafficking Free Movement.

The broader context here is one of sustained tension between the UK's deportation priorities and its obligations under international trafficking frameworks. UK legislation allows claims from Albanian nationals and other 'safe' countries to be certified under Section 94 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act, per a joint UK-Albania communique on trafficking Gov UK. This certification mechanism permits the Home Office to treat certain asylum claims as clearly unfounded, accelerating removal. The tribunal's guidance now narrows the space for that approach where male trafficking victims are concerned.

Several recent Upper Tribunal cases illustrate the tempo of removal efforts. In MB v Secretary of State for the Home Department, the claimant's removal under a Deportation Order was seven days away, with no arguable basis for contending the removal should be stayed Judiciary UK. In R on the application of WUL v Single Competent Authority, the claimant was scheduled for deportation to Tirana on 9 October 2024, involving a decision to maintain the deportation and a certification of the claim Judiciary UK. The AAA v Home Secretary Rwanda judgment concerned a trafficking victim whose inadmissibility decision — meaning the UK declared it would not consider the asylum claim at all — had been made, but on whose human rights claim no decision had yet been taken Judiciary UK.

The Home Office's own policy infrastructure has been evolving in parallel. The department published a Country Policy and Information Note on unaccompanied children in Albania in July 2025, stating each case must be considered with other countries to enable the safe return of unaccompanied children either to state authorities or other care Gov UK. The Modern Slavery Fund Albania Programme will run from 2026 to 31 March 2029, aimed at strengthening responses to labour, criminal and other forms of exploitation in Albania Gov UK.

What this means in practice is that the tribunal's guidance creates a binding framework — lower tribunals and Home Office caseworkers must follow it when assessing male Albanian trafficking claims. The finding that adult male victims lack dedicated shelters in Albania, combined with the documented risk of retrafficking and the persistence of corruption, effectively raises the evidentiary threshold for justifying removal. Cases involving cannabis cultivation exploitation, where victims are trafficked for criminal exploitation rather than labour or sexual exploitation in the traditional sense, will require particular scrutiny. The Home Office will need to reconcile its Section 94 certification practices for 'safe' countries with the tribunal's finding that trafficking victim status can ground a Refugee Convention claim. How the department adjusts its country policy notes and caseworker guidance in response to this binding determination will determine whether the ruling narrows removals in practice or simply shifts the battleground to individual certified claims.