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LONDON (AP) \u2014 The United Kingdom’s law to deport asylum-seekers<\/a> shouldn’t apply in Northern Ireland, because parts of it violate human rights protections, a Belfast judge ruled Monday.<\/p>\n The Illegal Migration Act was incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights and undermines rights provided in the Good Friday peace agreement<\/a> of 1998, High Court Justice Michael Humphreys said.<\/p>\n U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak<\/a> said that the government would appeal the judgment.<\/p>\n The law is central to Sunak’s contentious plan<\/a> to deport some migrants to Rwanda, but it wasn’t immediately clear what impact the ruling would have on that initiative.<\/p>\n While the prime minister\u2019s office said the ruling wouldn\u2019t derail or delay Rwanda deportations that the U.K. government says will begin in July, a lawyer whose client prevailed in bringing the case said the law wouldn’t apply in Northern Ireland.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a huge thorn in the government\u2019s side,” attorney Sin\u00e9ad Marmion said. \u201cThere\u2019s a huge obstacle in the way of them being able to actually implement that in Northern Ireland now.\u201d<\/p>\n The law was created to deter thousands of migrants who risk their lives crossing the English Channel<\/a> to claim asylum in the U.K. by creating the prospect that they would be sent to the east African country. It allows those who have arrived illegally to be deported to a \u201csafe\u201d third country where their claims can be processed.<\/p>\n While the U.K. Supreme Court struck down flights to Rwanda, because it said that the nation was unsafe, a subsequent bill pronounced the country safe<\/a>, and that makes it harder for migrants to challenge deportation. It also allows the U.K. government to ignore injunctions from the European Court of Human Rights that seek to block removals.<\/p>\n Humphreys found that parts of the law violated human rights protections of a post-Brexit deal signed between the U.K. and European Union last year. That agreement, known as the Windsor Framework, said that it must honor the peace accord that largely brought an end to the Troubles<\/a> \u2014 30 years of violence between British unionists and Irish nationalists.<\/p>\n The leader of the Democratic Unionist Party said that the U.K. government had been repeatedly warned that its immigration policy wouldn\u2019t apply in Northern Ireland, because it was incompatible with the post-Brexit agreement with the E.U.<\/p>\n \u201cWhilst today\u2019s judgment does not come as a surprise, it does blow the government\u2019s irrational claims that the Rwanda scheme could extend equally to Northern Ireland completely out of the water,\u201d DUP Leader Gavin Robinson said.<\/p>\n Sunak said that the Good Friday agreement wasn’t intended to be “expanded to cover issues like illegal migration.\u201d<\/p>\n The law was challenged by the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission and a 16-year-old Iranian boy who crossed the English Channel last year without any parents and claimed asylum in the U.K. The boy, who is living in Northern Ireland, said he would be imprisoned or killed if he’s sent back to Iran.<\/p>\n The judge placed a temporary stay on the ruling until later this month.<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n Follow AP\u2019s coverage of migration issues at https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/migration<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n