YORK'S top judge has called for the Home Secretary to make sure an illegal immigrant and sex offender is deported.

Laurie Scott, prosecuting, told him that Mardi Ouf Abdelsadek Habaka, 37, followed a drunk young woman onto the walkway off Ouse Bridge in York city centre late at night on July 14.

There he got her against a wall, offered her money for sex, tried to get her to kiss him and sexually attacked her.

He was in the country illegally and in the last three years had got work in a hotel, a restaurant and a bar all in the city centre using his brother's passport.

Jailing him for four years and four months, the Honorary Recorder of York, Judge Paul Batty QC said: "Given the length of sentence I have imposed, deportation is said to be automatic.

"I certainly hope the Secretary of State acts upon that."

The judge said that had he the power he would have had no hesitation in making a deportation order himself.

Of the sexual assault on the walkway between Ouse Bridge and North Street gardens, he told Habaka: "If you had not been disturbed, one shudders to think how this would have ended."

He also said Habaka, who also used the name Mohammed Hussain Abdulyazed Ali, had been "playing fast and loose for a long time now" with the immigration system.

Miss Scott told him Habaka had been convicted of using a passport illegally in 2005 in Bristol when he had been jailed for 12 months.

Although his brother had an Egyptian passport, Habaka had told immigration officers in the past he was Palestinian.

In December 2015, the Home Office issued guidance that deportation of people to the Occupied Palestinian Territories would be a breach of their human rights so should not be done.

Habaka, formerly of Neville Street, York, pleaded guilty to sexual assault and three charges of using a passport that was not his to obtain work and asked for two more similar passport charges to be taken into consideration.

His barrister Sean Smith said Habaka had left the country for some years after the Bristol conviction before returning "clandestinely".

The passport offences had been committed to try and support himself.