In a recent appeal case of a rejected asylum application, it was found that the UK Home Office’s rejection decision was allegedly based on a non-existent artificial intelligence-generated document. Further, an immigration court relied on the same document to reject the claimant’s first appeal. The claimant, a woman who fled modern slavery in Morocco with her child, took her case to a higher court.

The judge in the senior court has since described the reliance on AI evidence as “analogous to relying on bogus evidence.” The case exposes serious questions about how the UK assesses the asylum claims of the most vulnerable as well as recent decisions to deport rejected claimants without appeal.

A document that never existed

The case centers on a Moroccan woman and her child who fled after she experienced forced child marriage and extreme violence at the hands of her husband. She sought asylum in the UK on the basis that her husband—a powerful and previously convicted criminal—would kill her if she returned.

The Home Office refused her claim, citing a non-existent country policy information note (CPIN). CPINs are public documents, used primarily by Home Office officials, to assess whether a country is safe for return.

The Guardian reports:

But the document could not be found, although its existence was relied upon by a judge who rejected her appeal against the Home Office’s refusal decision in an immigration court known as the first-tier tribunal.

The woman lodged a further appeal to a more senior court, the upper tribunal, where another judge raised concerns about the unlocated document. In a decision on 14 July, the judge said: “It appears that no such CPIN has ever existed.

The judge added that the refusal letter “may therefore be the result of an AI hallucination.” He called it “an extremely serious failing.”

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