A windrush scandal victim who lost her job after being branded an illegal immigrant has won £20,000 compensation.
Teaching assistant Willow Sims, 42, was accused by education bosses of forging her passport and making up “a very good story” to stay here.
The Home Office also failed to help her as she lost her right to work and access to benefits, leaving her facing deportation.
Yet Miss Sims had arrived from the US aged four with her mum in 1981.
Both were given indefinite leave to remain.
Documents and a passport proving this were lost when she ended up in care as a teenager after her mum died – but immigration officials later told her it did not matter.
Miss Sim’s troubles began after a 2018 Lewisham Council routine check as she worked at Adamsrill Primary in Sydenham, South East London.
A council boss dismissed her lost documents explanation as “a very good story but your mum was obviously an illegal immigrant and so are you.”
Her plea to a Home Office taskforce to help Windrush victims wrongly targeted by immigration enforcement was rejected.
Now an employment tribunal has blasted the council allegation as “offensive and threatening” race discrimination, awarding her £20,828.
The Home Office taskforce says it is helping Miss Sims resolve her case.
She said: “My career is gone. I’m far too tarnished to get another job doing what I love.”
