UK and France rewrite ‘one in one out’ treaty to stop removed migrants returning | Immigration and asylum
The UK and France have been forced to rewrite their “one in, one out” agreement due to concerns about the number of people re-entering the UK after being sent to the continent.
The original agreement stated that people arriving on small boats could be returned to France. But people smugglers used the trucks to bring back to the UK people deported to France under the deal.
UK home secretary Shabana Mahmood changed the agreement with her French counterpart so that “one in, one out” immigrants who had previously been deported and returned to the UK by truck could be sent back to France again.
To close this loophole, the Home Office created a new claimant classification: “returnee case,” according to the documents. First announced by the Times.
Britain has sent back 921 migrants arriving by small boats to France since the agreement came into force on August 6 last year; this represents 3.5% of all such arrivals over the same period.
Britain accepted 896 refugees from France at that time under a mutual agreement.
The agreement stipulated that Britain could send illegal Channel immigrants back to France in exchange for taking in the same number of refugees.
At least four people deported under the scheme returned to the UK by truck over a two-week period in March, followed by at least two in the autumn.
Mahmood and Laurent Nuñez, the French home secretary, agreed that the agreement should apply to all returning migrants who entered the UK illegally, regardless of their methods.
In a letter to Nuñez, Mahmood said: “Following our last meeting, which allowed us to observe the quality of the cooperation established under the agreement… I would like to propose an addition to the objectives of the agreement, the express purpose of deterring the clandestine return to the United Kingdom of persons previously transferred to France under the agreement.”
People who were sent to France under the deal and later returned to the UK previously told the Guardian: [people] Smugglers know where the shelter in Paris is where people sleep in the first few days after returning to France.
“They caught me near the shelter and forced me back to England in a truck. The smugglers have guns, they have everything under control, we must try to survive.”
British prime minister Keir Starmer and French president Emmanuel Macron signed a deal known as “one in, one out” last July, which they praised as “groundbreaking”.
According to the terms of the agreement, an asylum seeker who arrived in England on a small boat is forcibly sent back to France, in return for which another asylum seeker who is in France and has not tried to cross the Channel is legally brought to England.
The two leaders initially agreed that the plan would be on a pilot basis and that it would end on June 11. However, the two countries have now agreed to extend the plan until October 1.
The number of people crossing the Channel so far this year is down by around a third compared to the same period last year, but this is thought to be partly due to weather conditions.
In April, Britain and France confirmed a new £662 million deal to stop migrants crossing the Channel.
A Home Office spokesman said: “Under our repatriation agreement with France, we have already removed more than 900 illegal immigrants from British territory.
“This adds to nearly 70,000 illegal immigrants returned from July 2024 to March 31, 2026, a 41 percent increase over the previous 21 months.”
