‘I don’t have a life’: man sent to France in ‘one in, one out’ refugee scheme tells of return to UK | Immigration and asylum

An asylum seeker who was sent back to France under a “one in, one out” plan has secretly returned to Britain and is now in hiding, the Guardian has learned.

In his first interview with a back-and-forth living secluded in the UK, the man told the Guardian his situation was “desperate”.

He said he was aware of the movement in and out of at least 18 asylum seekers who had returned in the same manner as him and were now secretly in the UK.

One returnee in mainland Europe interviewed by the Guardian said they were also aware of people secretly returning to Britain.

The man, who returned to England in a truck, said: “After I was sent back to France by the Home Office, the smugglers caught me and tried to force me to work with them.

“I don’t want to work with smugglers and I refused. They beat me so badly that my face is still full of bruises and injuries.

“I managed to escape from them and felt my only option was to return to the UK, which was a safer place for me.”

While in the “Jungle”, the name given to the refugee camp in northern France where smugglers operate, he said people were offered rides in trucks rather than boats because one was in and one was out.

“The price of a Channel crossing on a small boat varies between 1,000 and 2,000 euros, while a lorry to the UK costs between 4,000 and 5,000 euros.”

He said he believed many asylum seekers were returning to the UK on trucks: “I don’t know exactly how many people who were sent in and out of France returned to the UK and are now living underground, but I know there are 18.”

The goal of the one-in, one-out plan is to deter small boat crossings and stop human-smuggling gangs. However, since the agreement was reached between Britain and France, thousands of refugees have continued to cross the Channel and smugglers have adapted their business models accordingly.

They are now unloading more ships from Belgium and offering more expensive journeys to England in trucks to evade the police on the French coast.

The number of people crossing the Channel so far this year is down by around a third on the same period last year, but this is thought to be partly due to windy weather in recent months making crossings too dangerous.

As of 28 April, 605 people had returned to France and 581 had arrived in the UK under the one in, one out programme.

The returnee said he was not working in the UK illegally and rarely left the room where a friend had offered him temporary accommodation.

“I’m in a city outside London and I’m afraid to leave this room,” he said. “I’m running from smugglers, the police and the Ministry of Internal Affairs. I don’t have a life anymore and I don’t have a plan.”

“I’m thinking of turning myself in to the police, but if I do that and the Home Office sends me back to France I’m sure the smugglers will kill me if they find me because I escaped from them.

“I’m not a bad person for the UK. I want to live here in peace, work legally and be safe. But people like me living underground may be forced to commit crimes to survive. I’m here to follow the rules of the country, not break them, but immigration rules here may force people like me to break the rules by doing things like working illegally.”

In another case, an asylum seeker who smuggled himself out of the UK in January after living there for more than a decade because he feared the Home Office would detain and deport him recently received an email from the Home Office with no awareness that he had left the country.

The man, who now lives in Italy, said the Home Office message warned him of the sanctions decision for not keeping in touch and offered him help with a voluntary return from the UK to his home country.

“It’s crazy to get this from the Home Office,” he said. “They don’t realize I’m no longer in the UK. I’d love to return to the UK legally, but there’s no way for me to do that at the moment.”

Seema Syeda, of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, said: “The government’s border regime is pushing people onto unsafe routes and criminalizing people. The simple, moral answer is to let people seeking safety use the same routes as everyone else: train, ferry, plane.”

“Public money would be better spent on improving public services and solving the cost of living crisis, not on an inhumane and degrading border regime aimed at appeasing a small but vocal minority of far-right political groups.”

A Home Office spokesman said: “Anyone who wants to return to the UK after being deported under the UK-France agreement is wasting their time and money. They will be removed again.”

“Under this government, sanctions are increasing, asylum decision-making is increasing, removals are increasing, backlogs and hotel use are decreasing.

“Twenty-twenty-five was a record year for tackling organized immigration crime, with disruption rising by more than a third in 2024. Under our repatriation agreement with France, we deported more than 600 illegal immigrants from British territory.”