Lawyers in latest bid to stop UK deporting Mauritian student

Demonstrators gather in central London on Saturday to protest against the deportation of Yashika Bageerathi. Photograph: Jonathan Brady/PA

Lawyers will make a further attempt to stop the deportation of a 19-year-old Mauritian student who is scheduled to be flown out at 5pm on Sunday from Heathrow airport without her mother and siblings.

A legal team acting on behalf of her school, the Oasis Academy Hadley in Enfield, north London, will lodge a high court injunction later on Sunday to block the Home Office from sending Yashika Bageerathi back to Mauritius. One appeal has already failed, a spokesman for the school said.

More than 40 of her fellow students gathered in London on Saturday to protest against the decision, carrying banners and singing slogans in support of her right to stay.

The school's principal, Lynne Dawes, said she hoped the protest would force the home secretary, Theresa May, to intervene.

"We're hoping the home secretary will look favourably on this and stop her removal," she said. "I have a spoken to Yashika twice today and she is really worried. She said to me, 'What am I going to do, Miss?'"

Yashika has been in Yarl's Wood immigration removal centre since 19 March. She came to the UK with her mother, sister and brother to escape a relative who was physically abusive and claimed asylum last summer. On Tuesday, Yashika, her mother and younger brother and sister were told they faced the threat of deportation after receiving a letter from the Home Office.

Yashika's mother, was "struggling" and tearful, said Dawes.

David Hanson, the shadow immigration minister, said he would ask the Home Office to review the decision.

The MP said on Twitter: "I am contacting the home office minister to intervene personally in #yashika case to ask for urgent further review."

May has said that the teenager's case had gone through the "proper process" and she would not be stepping in. Speaking over the phone from Yarl's Wood, Yashika told Sky News she did not know what to do, and that she just wanted to finish her A-levels.

"I just want to be with my mum right now and celebrate Mother's Day as we do every year because I know she is very special to me," she said.

A petition by the students calling on May and James Brokenshire, the immigration minister, to stop the deportation has gathered more than164,000 signatures on website change.org.

Campaigners said: "Yashika Bageerathi arrived in the UK along with her mother and brother in 2012 to escape abuse and danger. In that time, Yashika has proved herself a model student and valuable member of the community. However, now that she is legally deemed and adult, she is to be torn apart from her family and deported to Mauritius without even having the chance to compete her education … The students feel that to deport Yashika at any stage would cost the UK a valuable member of society. To do so just weeks before she is about to complete her education, in their opinion, would be an uncompassionate and illogical act of absurdity."

A Home Office spokesperson said: "We consider every claim for asylum on its individual merits and in this case the applicant was not considered to be in need of protection. This case has gone through the proper legal process and our decision has been supported by the courts."