Britain’s Home Office is continuing to forcibly return asylum seekers to France weeks after its “one in, one out” agreement ended on October 1, according to a November 1 report by the Guardian.
Officials chartered a flight to France on October 28 for a group believed to have reached Britain in small boats before the scheme closed. Another flight is scheduled for November 17. Home Office sources told the newspaper that returns involving the remaining cohort were continuing despite the deal’s expiration, while dozens of people were understood to remain detained.
French President Emmanuel Macron and then-British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced the agreement in July 2025. It sought to discourage Channel crossings by returning some small-boat arrivals to France while admitting a similar number of asylum seekers legally from northern France.
Emma Ginn, director of Medical Justice, said people were still being held in detention centres ahead of forced removal. She warned that detention was harming vulnerable people, compounded by the prospect of returning to France, where many had reported violence and abuse by smugglers.
The Guardian reported that at least seven people returned to France under the scheme had reached Britain again since October 1. It interviewed two, a Syrian man and an Iranian man, whose asylum claims were now being processed in Britain. The Iranian man said smugglers in France had tortured and beaten him.
The scheme’s deterrent effect remains unclear. Small-boat crossings had fallen about 40% compared with the same period in 2025, but irregular migration to Europe had declined by a similar proportion, the newspaper reported. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood told Parliament’s home affairs committee that removals to France had cost at least £78 million.