UK mistakenly sent EU citizens deportation letter

The Home Office of Britain has mistakenly informed about 100 people that they are to be deported from Britain, local media reported Wednesday.

A letter was issued "in error" to a number of people stating that they are "liable to detention" so that a decision had been taken to remove them from Britain under immigration law.

Dr Eva Johanna Holmberg, a Finnish historian who is married to a British citizen and working in a British university, received the letter which tells she to leave in a month.

"I opened it and it had the words 'the decision has been made to remove you'. I couldn't believe what I was seeing," she said.

A Home Office spokesperson said the letter had been issued "in error", along with some 100 others, and they are "urgently" looking into why the letters were wrongly sent out.

"A limited number of letters were issued in error and we have been urgently looking into why this happened. We are contacting everyone who received this letter to clarify that they can disregard it," the spokesperson said, adding "We are absolutely clear that the rights of EU nationals living in the UK remain unchanged".

Dr Holberg's local MP, Green Party co-leader Caroline Lucas, who has since contacted the Home Office regarding the situation, accused the government of "turning lives upside down" by "callously playing hard ball over Brexit".

Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary Ed Davey said these letters "shame Britain".

"EU nationals who have made their lives here are already facing huge uncertainty over Brexit. It is appalling that some are now being officially threatened with deportation. This catastrophic error is a sign of the chaos and incompetence at the heart of this Conservative government," he said.

He said the Home Secretary Amber Rudd should personally write to apologise to each of those affected.