A second migrant who had been removed from the UK to France under the government’s “one in, one out” pilot has re-entered the UK and been detained, the Home Office confirmed. He was detected by biometrics on arrival and will be returned to France “as quickly as possible”, a spokesperson said.
The pilot scheme with France is designed to deter Channel crossings in small boats by returning one migrant to France for each removed. Last month an Iranian man who had been sent to France re-entered the UK by small boat one month after his removal; he was deported again last Wednesday.
A Home Office spokesperson said officials would continue to catch and return anyone trying to re-enter the UK. “Anyone looking to return to the UK after being removed under the UK-France agreement is wasting their time and money,” the spokesperson said. “This individual was detected by biometrics and detained immediately. His case will be expedited, and he will be returned to France as quickly as possible. The message is clear: if you try to return to the UK you will be sent back. We will do whatever it takes to scale up removals of illegal migrants and secure our borders.”
The first flight carrying a cross-Channel small boat migrant, an Indian national, landed in Paris on 18 September. The UK-France pilot, agreed in September, aims to reduce small-boat crossings by returning migrants to France. About 100 men detained after arriving in the UK on a small boat were held in immigration removal centres near Heathrow and told they might be returned to France.
The Home Office has said 94 migrants have been returned to France and 57 people have arrived in the UK under the scheme so far. Migrant crossings remain high: more than 500 crossed the Channel by small boat on one day recently, 349 on the next, and 39,075 people have made the journey so far this year.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is considering a major overhaul of UK immigration rules modelled on Denmark’s system. At Labour conference in September, Mahmood pledged to “do whatever it takes” to regain control of Britain’s borders and has been reported to admire Denmark’s reduction in successful asylum claims. She is said to want to cut incentives for people to come to the UK by tightening family reunion rules and making it easier to remove those with no right to stay.
Downing Street said the detection of a second returnee showed the system was working. The prime minister’s official spokesman said: “You’ve got a person who’s arrived at the front door, who’s been detected immediately, their journey has been wasted completely. They are in line to return to France, just as the previous case was – out of pocket and out of chances – they are destined to go back straight to France and their money spent on this dangerous crossing will have been spent in vain.”
Opposition and other parties criticised the government’s handling. Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Max Wilkinson described the Home Office as showing “staggering levels of incompetence” and called for asylum seekers to be moved out of hotels alongside “large-scale returns agreements” with all safe countries. “Failures like this show just how broken our system is,” he said.
Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said nearly 18,000 migrants had arrived in the UK since the deal was struck, with “only a handful removed…which is why they continue to flood in”. Philp said only the Conservatives had a clear plan to tackle illegal migration, proposing measures including leaving the European Convention on Human Rights and removing all illegal immigrants within a week of arrival, and criticised Labour and Reform for lacking comparable plans.
