Daily Mail
July 15, 2014
An American crack dealer has won the right to stay in Britain because he relies on free NHS medical care and has a depressed girlfriend.
Johnny Callie was jailed for seven years in 2007 for conspiracy to supply crack cocaine and heroin following a two-year covert operation by Ipswich police.
Callie was part of a 10-strong gang that flooded the area with drugs from their base in Colchester and was arrested following raids in August 2005.
In January, 2011 Home Secretary Theresa May refused to revoke an order for Callie’s deportation after he appealed the automatic order made following his sentencing in November 2007.
But the decorated Vietnam war veteran, who is suffering from diabetes, high blood pressure and ‘degenerative changes to his right knee’ has now argued he would not be able to afford medical care in the US. He also cited the ill health of his long-term girlfriend.
The 64-year-old has been fighting his deportation through the courts since his release from prison in August 2010.
He earlier halted the order on the grounds it breached his right to family life under Article 8 of the European Convention for Human Rights.
Mrs May appealed that decision, but Judge Bernard Dawson ruled that Callie could stay.
He heard that Callie had been living with his British citizen partner, referred to in documents as SN, since June 1995, and that she had ‘no contact with other members of her family and has very few friends’.
A decision by Judge Dawson reads: ‘Due to her depression and anxiety she is usually dependent upon the claimant and cannot easily leave her home on her own or travel outside Ipswich unless he is with her.