UK postpones first migrant return flights to France under ‘one in, one out’ pilot
Departures planned for this week were deferred as a High Court legal challenge and further checks delayed initial removals under the Franco-British agreement
The planned first returns of migrants who reached the UK on small boats across the English Channel will not take place on Tuesday, the BBC has learned, after initial deportation plans were deferred amid legal and administrative scrutiny.
The removals form part of a pilot “one in, one out” scheme agreed by Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron in July, under which France will take back adults or accompanied children who travelled to the UK by small boat once any asylum claim is withdrawn or declared inadmissible, and the UK will accept someone with a protection claim from France for each person returned. Downing Street said the government was "confident in the legal basis for this pilot" and was "prepared to respond to any legal scrutiny that occurs."
Some migrants detained in immigration removal centres were told in recent days that they could be returned to France as early as Tuesday, with letters indicating they might be placed on a scheduled Air France flight departing Heathrow at 9am. Officials said, however, that several potential passengers had been told their departures were deferred after lawyers made further representations on their cases — a common occurrence in immigration removals when legal representatives say an individual has not had a full opportunity to present their case.
On Tuesday, the first legal challenge to the agreement was launched in the High Court in London. The claim, brought on behalf of an unnamed 25-year-old Eritrean man who arrived in the UK in August, sought to block a removal scheduled for 9am the following day. Sonali Naik KC, representing the man, told the court that a decision was pending under the national referral mechanism, the process that identifies and assesses victims of modern slavery and human trafficking.
The Home Office began detaining some small boat migrants on Aug. 6 on the grounds that they were ineligible for asylum after having spent time in a safe third country. Under the new treaty, London refers each potential return case to French authorities, who then have two weeks to respond before starting the process of proposing who should come to the UK in their place.
The BBC reported that migrants living in the Calais region who had applied to the Franco-British resettlement scheme had been rejected, while asylum seekers in the Paris region had been accepted. The government has not disclosed how many people will be returned or relocated weekly under the pilot, and former home secretary Yvette Cooper emphasized that the arrangement is operating on a trial basis.
Other factors that may have contributed to the postponement include whether French authorities were ready to receive returnees and whether security checks and eligibility assessments of potential refugees for relocation to the UK had been completed.
The pilot is one element of a broader package of measures the government has unveiled to tackle small boat crossings. Critics from the Conservative Party have argued the scheme will not remove enough people to act as a meaningful deterrent. Ministers have declined to provide a firm figure for returns under the trial.
The delays come against a backdrop of record crossings. More than 30,000 people have crossed the Channel in small boats so far this year, the earliest date that threshold has been passed since official data began being recorded in 2018.
Officials on both sides of the Channel will need to resolve outstanding legal, procedural and logistical questions before removal flights can begin. The government has indicated that it expects returns to start "imminently" but has so far provided no firm timetable beyond saying initial plans were put back while further checks and legal processes were addressed.