THE head of a North-East special needs school last night pleaded with immigration services to let a profoundly disabled girl stay in this country amid fears she could die if sent home to Yemen.

Five-year-old Miaad Garwash, who is blind, deaf, dumb, wheelchair-bound, and suffers from epilepsy, is due to be deported with her family today.

It is believed she was arrested with her family by immigration services over the weekend and sent to a detention centre in Cambridge ready for deportation.

The family lodged a claim for asylum two years ago when they entered the country and have been legally living in their Middlesbrough home while their claim for refugee status was being processed.

Exact details of the family's application to the Home Office and why it has been refused are not known.

Although Yemen is peaceful at present, it has been marred by civil war in the past. There are still thousands of unexploded landmines and there was violence last year in the run-up to municipal voting.

Last night, Bernadette Knill, head of top-performing Priory Woods School in Middlesbrough, where Miaad has been educated since February, warned that the girl could die if sent back to Yemen.

She said: "She has very, very profound learning difficulties. She has no speech, she can't see or hear and she can't walk.

"She will have more epileptic fits if they are not being controlled properly and I think she will suffer further brain damage."

The 145-pupil school, which has Beacon status and helps children with severe special needs from the age of four to 19, was not officially informed that Miaad was being deported.

Mrs Knill said: "We have just ordered specialist equipment for her which is specifically for her.

"It isn't needed for anyone else, and now she won't be able to use it.

"I was really upset about the speed at which it happened, and the fact we weren't properly warned, because it wasn't fair that the staff weren't allowed to say goodbye to her or give her any programmes of work.

"We quickly got some things together for her and put all her reports together so she didn't have to go through any more assessments.

"If we had known, we could have all her reports translated into Arabic ready for when she went home.

"I don't know what the facilities are like in Yemen, but when her parents first came here they didn't know about special needs measures so I don't think there is anything in place over there for her."

Kath Sainsbury, North-East and Scotland co-ordinator for the National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns, said: "She has had the best resources at her school and was making excellent progress.

"I was told the family was arrested on Sunday. Immigration had started letting families know in advance when they were due to be deported, but this all happened so quickly I don't think the family can have known. It must have been very distressing for them."

Since Miaad failed to turn up to school on Monday morning and staff discovered what had happened to her, Mrs Knill and staff have been contacting the Home Office, Immigration Service and local MPs to try to get an 11th-hour reprieve.

Mrs Knill added: "We are all shocked and angry that all the work we had done with her cannot continue.

"We have been using ICT (information and communication technology) to work with her, and giving her experiences of touch and feeling wind on her face - a whole host of activities which are designed to let her know there is something going on around her, that she is part of a world and not just on her own."

A Home Office spokesman said last night: "We are not able to comment on individual cases. Someone's individual immigration status is something that is confidential."