Foreign
Inhumane’ Home Office denying visas to children of migrant health workers
Under an opaque policy condemned as discriminatory and “inhumane”, the government has refused dozens of visas for children of migrant single mothers, many of whom came to work in the NHS or social care, saying there are “no compelling reasons” to grant them.The women left their children – some as young as two – in the temporary care of relatives or friends while they moved to Britain from countries including Zimbabwe, Zambia, Kenya, South Africa and India.
Before leaving, they say, they had been reassured by their employers that their children would be able to follow, in line with current immigration rules permitting healthcare workers to bring close family members. But when they applied for the children’s visas, the applications were rejected.
In refusal letters seen by the Observer, the Home Office questioned why the children could not stay permanently with their grandparents or other relatives. In other cases, it said there was no reason why they could not go to live with their fathers, even though their mothers had sole custody or the fathers had not seen the children for years. Many of the letters, addressed directly to the children, conclude: “It was your mother’s personal decision to depart for the UK and you have not provided sufficient evidence to grant your visa on serious or compelling grounds.”
The cases have come to light weeks after the government announced a plan to slash immigration by placing restrictions on the dependants of migrant healthcare workers. Under controversial rules expected to be introduced this spring, care workers coming to the UK will be barred from bringing family members, while other health workers will have to earn £29,000 a year, rising to £38,700 in 2025, to be permitted to do so.
But scores of applications from such workers are already being quietly refused. The Observer has examined 10 cases, and been alerted to 140 more, where migrant women, all single mothers, have had visas for children denied in the past 18 months.
The applications have not been rejected because the Home Office doubts they are genuine or that the women are the children’s primary caregivers. Instead, they have been refused under a Home Office rule that a child may only be given a visa if both parents are living in the UK, unless the parent living here has “sole responsibility”.
The policy means single parents are required to prove not only that they have sole custody but that the other parent is not involved in their child’s upbringing – something experts say can be hard to do.
If the sole responsibility threshold is not met, the Home Office can still grant applications if it believes there are compelling or compassionate grounds.
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But as yet, it has declined to do so in the women’s cases investigated by the Observer, which has seen extensive evidence to support the mothers’ claims that they are their children’s sole caregivers.
In many cases, the women gave the Home Office court documents and custody papers proving they were the sole custodian, as well as bank statements, insurance policies, photos and letters of support from schools, doctors and church leaders.
Getty, a care worker from Zambia, had a visa for her six-year-old daughter denied.
Many also have signed consent letters from their children’s fathers, but in some cases this has been used against them. One mother, Getty, had a visa for her six-year-old daughter denied. The care worker from Zambia says she and the girl’s father separated when she was pregnant and she has always been her sole caregiver.
Shortly after she arrived in Britain in March, Getty, 36, submitted an application for her child to join her. She supplied documents including a court order linked to her separation and an affidavit from the girl’s father saying it would be in the child’s best interests to come to Britain. But the Home Office refused the child a visa, saying the fact her father had provided a consent letter was proof he was still in her life and could therefore look after her.
Getty said the separation had taken a huge toll, adding: “My daughter asks me every day when her papers are going to be ready. I have to be honest with her and tell her: ‘I’m still waiting.’ She is only used to living with me. It’s really, really hard.”
In another case, an NHS nurse who provided the Home Office with a court document proving she had sole custody for her two daughters, aged four and 13, was told there were no “serious or compelling reasons” why the girls needed to join her. “It’s heartbreaking. How can I sleep at night?” she said. “I am the mother of the children and I have always looked after them.”
Patricia Chinyoka, chief executive of Women of Zimbabwe, is trying to help migrant women who come to work in Britain get visas to bring their families with them. Photograph: Antonio Olmos/The Observer
Patricia Chinyoka, chief executive of the Women of Zimbabwe project, which is supporting many of the women, described the refusals as “absolutely appalling”.
“Some of the women have supplied an amazing array of proof and then they still get a letter saying: ‘We don’t believe you.’ They have sold properties, left jobs – they’ve sold up and come here and this is what they are now faced with,” Chinyoka said. “They don’t know what to do.”
It is not the first time the sole responsibility test has faced scrutiny. In November, a Kenyan expert in world literature at Bristol University was refused a visa for her six-year-old daughter. The decision was later reversed. In 2019, two other similar cases were also reversed.
Sairah Javed, a solicitor at the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, said a helpline the campaigning charity runs with the Unison trade union had seen a “categoric rise” in such refusals in recent months, with about 20 last year compared with five in previous years.
Most related to single mothers in the healthcare sector. “We’re seeing a lot of pain and heartache for people who have come to the UK in accordance with all our rules,” Javed said. “It’s quite inhumane. It’s just another form of assault on family values.”
Liberal Democrat peer Sally Hamwee, chair of the justice and home affairs committee in the Lords, called for the policy to be revised. Lady Hamwee said: “It does not recognise how families operate in the 21st century and is causing huge distress and harm to adults and children who are swept up in it.”
The Home Office said it could not comment on individual cases. It said: “The sole responsibility rule is a long-term government policy and all visa applications are carefully considered on their individual merits in accordance with immigration rules.”
A Nigerian-born Roman Catholic priest, Anthony Odiong, has been convicted by a jury in Texas, United States, for sexually assaulting women under his spiritual care, The Guardian reports.
Odiong, 57, was found guilty on one count of first-degree sexual assault and two counts of second-degree sexual assault after a trial in Waco, Texas.
The jury, made up of eight women and four men, delivered its verdict after about two hours of deliberation on Friday.
The court heard testimony from two women who said Odiong used his role as a priest to manipulate and pressure them into sexual relationships.
He was accused of exploiting his position as a Catholic priest to pursue sexual relationships with women he was providing spiritual direction.
Odiong, who pleaded not guilty, could face life imprisonment on the first-degree charge when sentencing begins on Monday.
Prosecutors said the offences involved two women who testified in court that the priest abused his clerical authority during periods of emotional vulnerability.
One of the women, identified in court documents as Mary Doe, told the jury that Odiong began a sexual relationship with her while providing spiritual counselling during a difficult divorce.
She also testified that her son once walked in on her and Odiong during intercourse at her home.
Another woman, Jane Doe, testified that he pressured her into sexual acts under the guise of spiritual guidance.
The case followed a 2024 report by The Guardian, which first documented allegations of sexual misconduct and coercion against the priest during his ministry in Texas and Louisiana.
Prosecutors said that report prompted one of the victims to come forward to police with further allegations.
Investigators later gathered additional evidence, including DNA linked to a child fathered by Odiong during his time in Louisiana.
Odiong, a naturalised US citizen, was ordained in Nigeria in 1993 and later served in Catholic parishes in Texas and Louisiana.
Authorities said he was suspended from the ministry in 2019 following earlier allegations of misconduct.
His lawyers argued during the trial that the relationships were consensual, but prosecutors maintained that he abused his position of authority as a clergy member.
A United States-based 23 year old tech-developer, Tony Kabilan Okeke, led a five-man team of Drexel University, Philadelphia, Penn., U.S. alumni and students to develop Xploit, an automated cybersecurity testing tool for AI agents, an ambitious concept that addresses a growing problem in AI landscape.
Beside Tony Okeke who is the Team Lead, other members of the team are Kamdi Okeke, Kiitan Fawole, Dalu Okonkwo and Michael Moemeke.
Speaking to our reporter on the development, Tony said, “As more businesses deploy AI agents that can take actions and use tools on behalf of customers, these systems become potential security risks. Unlike simple AI assistants, agents have access to tools and can perform real actions – meaning a security vulnerability isn’t just a PR problem, it could have serious real-world consequences.”
3rd from right, Team lead, Tony, Kamdi, Dalu, flanked by UEV partners
The team envisioned a tool that could automatically test an AI agent for vulnerabilities – essentially playing the role of a digital attacker to identify weaknesses before real threats could exploit them. This was the outcome of their brainstorming on November 21, 2025, when Tony led the group to build and pitch Xploit in the “Start-Up In a Weekend” Hackathon hosted on November 21 – 23, 2025 in Philadelphia, by The Foundry & Velric, a Philadelphia-based founder-first community that act as a startup ecosystem catalyst.
Tony designed the system’s architecture and created the initial prototype of the user interface (UI). The UI concept was crucial: it needed to visually show how their automated attacker was thinking, strategizing, and attempting different approaches in real-time, all displayed through interactive graph showing the attack process as it unfolded.
Responsibilities were strategically divided amongst the team. Some members created sample AI agents to serve as “victims” for testing. Tony developed the core attacking system. One person refined the user interface, and others handled the technical infrastructure connecting all the pieces together.
The attacking system itself works like a strategic game player. It would first choose an attack strategy, then create a detailed plan, execute that plan step-by-step by sending messages to the target AI agent, and analyze the responses to determine whether to continue or try a different approach. Throughout this process, the web interface displayed everything happening in real-time, allowing users to watch the automated tester work.
The team then integrated everything — making the attacker communicate with the victim AI agent systems, ensuring the automated testing loop ran smoothly, and polishing the final product. They recorded their demo video and submitted their project before the 9 am deadline on November 23, 2025.
During the afternoon judging session, the team delivered their pitch, framing their project around a massive, unaddressed market shift, highlighting a critical market gap: while the explosion of AI agents in 2025 has seen enterprises deploy them to manage everything from infrastructure to sensitive tasks like financial analysis and customer support, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are left vulnerable because they cannot afford to test them for security flaws. Unlike tech giants, SMBs lack the resources for dedicated AI security teams. Xploit, automated cybersecurity tool, directly addresses this need, positioning itself within a booming continuous automated red-teaming market projected to skyrocket from $495 million in 2024 to $4.9 billion by 2032. Xploit democratizes AI safety, levels the playing field, allowing any business to automatically test and secure their AI agents before deployment.
The judges were impressed enough that they took an unusual step — they asked to see the team’s code and development history to verify the project had actually been built during the hackathon weekend. This verification was necessary because the judges found it hard to believe such a polished product could be created in just one weekend.
The team won the “new project track” award and $1,500 in prize money.
“What made the achievement particularly remarkable” according to Kamdi Okeke, “wasn’t just that we built it over a weekend — it was that, competing amongst a diverse group of 100+ of Philadelphia’s most driven creators, we built Xploit in less than a day of actual development time, transforming an abstract idea into a working, polished prototype through focused collaboration and strategic planning.”
Speaking further, Tony said, “The experience at yet another hackathon, UEV’s Venture Building Weekend hosted in Philadelphia, March 12 – 14, 2026, was a turning point for us. The mentorship and feedback we received from industry operators helped sharpen how we think about the problem and where our approach fits in the market.”
United Effects Ventures (UEV) is a Philadelphia-based pre-seed venture studio. Through its Venture Building Weekend, a competitive hackathon, focused on problem validation and go-to-market strategy, teams refined their ideas with guidance from experienced operators and investors. After a grueling 48-hour sprint, Xploit came tops, outperformed 15 other competing teams, earning a cash award and two advisory sessions with partners at UEV; and most importantly, industry experts validated Xploit’s focus on continuous red-teaming as a strong approach to discovering vulnerabilities in AI-powered products.
Mentors at the hackathon validated both the team’s identification of the problem – the growing security risks posed by AI agents operating autonomously in enterprise environment – and their approach of framing the product as continuous red-teaming platform, which could support an ongoing service model.
The accusation comes after US Central Command said its forces had on Monday attacked missile sites and boats in southern Iran that were trying to lay mines in the Gulf, while Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said it fired at US aircraft trying to enter its airspace.
“The US terrorist army, continuing its illegal and unjustified actions since the ceasefire… has, in the past 48 hours, committed a gross violation of the ceasefire in the Hormozgan region,” the Iranian foreign ministry said in a statement.
It added that Tehran “will not leave any evil unanswered and will not hesitate to defend the Iranian nation,” without elaborating.
Tuesday’s statement came as a top Iranian delegation was in Qatar for talks as part of a “diplomatic process” aimed at ending the war with the United States, which broke out on February 28.
AFP
Iranian authorities held mass public weddings in Tehran for couples who signed up to a state-sponsored scheme declaring their readiness to sacrifice their lives in the war against the US and Israel.
The ceremonies conducted late on Monday involved hundreds of couples in several major squares in the capital, including more than 100 in the vast Imam Hossein square in central Tehran, according to reports in Iranian media.
They were broadcast on state TV in a bid to boost wartime morale, with US President Donald Trump repeatedly threatening new military action against Iran amid a shaky ceasefire which halted the fighting that began on February 28.
Those involved had signed up, according to Iranian media, for the so-called “self-sacrifice” scheme (janfada in Persian) where people pledged to put their lives on the line in the war by, for example, forming human chains outside power stations.
Iranian authorities say millions of people, including top figures such as the speaker of parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, and President Masoud Pezeshkian, have put their names forward.
Couples arrived at the Imam Hossein square in military jeeps with mounted machine guns and were married on a stage in a ceremony presided over by a cleric, AFP images showed.
The stage was festooned with balloons and with a giant image of Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, who has yet to appear in public since being elevated to the position after the killing of his father and predecessor, Ali Khamenei, on the first day of the war.
“Certainly, the country is at war, but young people also have the right to marry,” one young woman in a white Islamic bridal dress, who was not named, said beside her groom in footage published by the Mehr news agency.
A man in a dark suit, beside his bride-to-be, said they were happy the occasion marked the anniversary of the marriage of the Prophet Ali, revered by Shia Muslims, to Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet Mohammed.
“We received their blessings. Furthermore, we came to offer our best wishes to the people in the streets,” he said.
Mehr said 110 couples had taken part in the Imam Hossein Square ceremony alone. The AFP images showed crowds of well-wishers clasping roses and watching on.
Since the start of the war, Iranian authorities have held, on a near-daily basis, major pro-government gatherings in a bid to highlight popular mobilisation amid the conflict.
AFP
The Nigerian community in the United States has been thrown into mourning following the sudden death of Eric Ezeokoli, a student of California State University, Long Beach.
Ezeokoli, who was born on October 6, 1960, reportedly died on Friday, April 11, 2026, at Saint Mary’s Hospital after a brief illness.
Until his death, he was studying Engineering at the university, also known as Long Beach State University. Sources disclosed that he had previously lived in San Jose before relocating to the Los Angeles area.
Tragically, at the time of his passing, Ezeokoli was said to be homeless and living in his car, with no fixed address.
The deceased was originally from Anambra State, although details about his exact hometown remain unclear. There are indications he may have hailed from Aguata, but this has not been officially confirmed.
Efforts are currently underway to locate his family members and relatives in Nigeria. Members of the Nigerian community and concerned individuals are appealing to anyone with useful information about Ezeokoli’s background or family to come forward.
A contact person, Paul Kizito Eze, has been designated to receive information that could help trace the deceased’s relatives.
The appeal has also been extended to people from Anambra State, particularly those familiar with communities in Aguata, to assist in identifying and notifying the family.
The situation has sparked renewed concern over the welfare of some Nigerians living abroad, especially those facing hardship and isolation.
Anyone with relevant information is urged to reach out urgently to assist in reconnecting the late Ezeokoli with his family for proper burial arrangements.
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