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‘One in,
one out’: what has happened to asylum seekers forced to return to France?
This
article is more than 7 months old
In rare
interviews, some of those sent back across the Channel after arriving in the UK
on small boats describe what happened next – and the risks of a system
organised to get rid of them
By Diane Taylor
Thu 19
Feb 2026 16.00 CET
When Keir
Starmer stood alongside the French president, Emmanuel Macron, at Northwood
military base last July and announced a “groundbreaking”
treaty to stop small boats overfilled with migrants from crossing the
Channel, he said there was no “silver bullet”. But, he added, the plan would
“finally turn the tables” on the numbers making the crossing.
The
initiative, known as “one in, one out”, means each small boat arrival can be
forcibly returned to France
in exchange for another person – who has not attempted the crossing – being
brought to the UK legally.
Only a
few hundred people have been sent back to France since the returns began last
September, with a similar number brought legally to the UK – fewer than the
number who cross on one moderately busy day. On Thursday, dozens of asylum
seekers were forcibly removed to France on Thursday morning, despite warnings
that their lives would be in danger there from traffickers. Some told the
Guardian they were in deep distress about their situation, with some crying and
others saying they were suicidal.
The UK
government has put up warning signs in Calais to try to prevent people crossing
the Channel in small boats.
The
situation for arrivals who are detained in the UK in preparation for a forced
return is well documented: asylum seekers themselves have issued
reports from behind bars and staged
a peaceful protest. Earlier this month nine UN experts published a
20-page letter to the UK and French governments raising concerns about
potential breaches of international law, and called for the scheme to be
scrapped.
But the
experiences of those sent back under the scheme have been largely invisible.
The UK Home Office
says the question is a matter for France. The French interior ministry has not
commented.
The
Guardian has tracked the cases of more than a dozen returnees, building a
picture of what happens once they leave UK custody. In interviews conducted
over several months, they highlight the consequences of a system that was never
organised with their plight in mind: some have fled France for their own
safety, while others have experienced violence at the hands of smugglers who
have rapidly adapted to the new system.
Others
have gone missing. Despite the assertion that they will never be allowed to
settle in the UK, all of them say they intend to return. “We know that if we
come on a small boat the UK will try to send us back again to France,” said one
Kurdish man, who suggested that instead, he would try to come by lorry, and
work in the hidden economy without informing the Home Office. “Then we will
then come forward, and claim asylum when this ‘one in, one out’ deal is
finished.”
But
before they can think of taking that step, the barriers facing them are
formidable.
Back in
France: ‘They are playing a game of football with us’
Returnees
have little confidence that they can expect a stable situation once they are
returned. One man, from a former Soviet republic, said he believed he would end
up dead if he was forcibly returned to his country, because he had challenged
his government politically.
“I am
frightened of being sent to Germany where I have fingerprints and from there
back to my home country,” he said. “I face 15 years in prison but they don’t
have the resources to maintain the prisons so they just kill people instead.
The Home Office breaks your hope. They are playing a game of football with us –
we are the ball. They think we are stupid. France takes the money from the UK
to take us back but then ‘Dublins’ us. It’s corruption and it’s big money. It’s
a political game, not a people game.”
The
Dublin regulation, named after the city where it was established, says that
asylum seekers in the EU can be sent to another country where they have
previously been fingerprinted.
One in
One out: broken dinghy
The man,
who filmed part of his journey in a dinghy (above), said he was so traumatised
by everything that had happened to him that he collapsed recently and was taken
to hospital, where he was diagnosed with PTSD.
A Somali
man who was one of the first to be returned to France said he was also
struggling as he waited for a decision on “Dublin”. He too is in French
state-provided accommodation. “Is their idea of humanitarian protection to send
back people who have no shelter or protection to the very countries they fled
from?” he asked. “This UK agreement will go down as a dark chapter in history
because it has abandoned us completely. They are using us as an example. It’s
painful and shameful. Nothing is going well for us.”
Leaving
France: ‘It is not safe for me there’
A central
fear of many returnees is that if they are “Dublined”, they will be forcibly
returned to their home country and the risk of persecution.
One man
who was detained in Bulgaria on his journey to the UK covertly filmed
conditions there on his phone. “Bulgaria was so bad. I never want to go back
there,” he said.
One in
One out: Rough sleeping in Italy
Others
have left of their own volition because they faced threats in France itself.
The Guardian is aware of at least four “one in, one out” people sleeping on the
streets in Italy, two huddled together next to a fire they lit to keep warm in
the city of Ravenna (above).
One
Afghan asylum seeker, who fled France soon after being returned because of
threats from people-smugglers, said: “If we felt that France was a safe country
for us we never would have paid smugglers to make a dangerous crossing to the
UK.”
Another
man, from Iraq, left France after a few days. “Really it is not safe for me
there because of the smugglers,” he said.
“I have
crossed the border to Italy and have moved around different cities. I have been
sleeping in the street and sometimes I sleep on trains – in the evenings the
police and ticket inspectors don’t check the trains too much. One evening I got
on a train in Italy and woke up the next morning in Switzerland. We like
trains, they have become our home.”
While
lone children should not be sent to France under “one in, one out”, that rule
may not have been reliably applied. The Guardian tracked down one 17-year-old
who slept on the street for 20 nights in France before claiming asylum in
Italy, where he has been determined to be a child. He is now being cared for in
an Italian children’s home and is attending school.
“I told
the Home Office that I am 17 and showed them my identity document with my date
of birth on it,” he said. “But they said they did not believe me and that I was
lying about my age. I’m very heartbroken with the UK because I told them the
truth.” Although the Guardian showed the Home Office the teenager’s Italian
documents confirming him to be a child, the Home Office insisted that its age
assessment procedures were “robust”.
One in
One out: Smuggler shooting
Smugglers’
violence: ‘They make us afraid’
Others
have returned to the area in northern France where smugglers operate, known as
the Jungle. Asylum seekers say those who offer to take them across the Channel
illegally have become increasingly violent, and during the hours of darkness
gunshots can often be heard there. Many carry guns and one asylum seeker
recorded a smuggler firing his gun into the air (above).
An asylum
seeker now in Sweden after fleeing France said two days before he travelled to
the UK, one of the smugglers had picked up a huge piece of wood, lit it from an
open fire, and branded his back with it.
The
smugglers ‘are strict and scary’, said a 27-year-old from Iran, who had
returned to the UK for a second time but is now back in France. Photograph:
Julien Daniel/MYOP/The Guardian
“The
smugglers do these violent things to make us afraid of them. I am going to stay
in Sweden until I have recovered from my injury … after that I will find a way
to get back to the UK.”
One
Iranian man who returned to the UK for a second time is now back in France, in
basic accommodation provided by the French government as he waits to see if he
will be sent to Italy under the Dublin rules.
He said
he had returned to the UK for a second time because his family, who had paid
the smugglers for his place on a dinghy, had received credible death threats
from them. “The smugglers … threatened us with death and took our photos. They
are strict and scary. I stay inside, I’m not brave enough to go outside.”
He is
given an allowance of a few euros a day by the French government and has taught
himself to cook, making a small amount of money go as far as possible. He posts
some of the food he cooks on Instagram to try to occupy his time while he is
waiting for his fate to be determined.
Another
Iranian who has now crossed the border to Germany said: “I don’t think the UK
government understands how much danger they are putting us in with the
smugglers by sending us back to France. I was raped by the smugglers when I was
in Turkey. They know the Home Office seizes
our phones when we arrive in the UK. They say: ‘If you give the UK any
information about us we will kill you.’ Nowhere is safe for us. There is
nowhere to go. Germany is speeding up interviews and deportations. I know I
will not be able to stay here.”
One
Iranian returnee has learned to cook to save money, and posts pictures of his
meals on Instagram.
The
smugglers adapt: ‘Now, they can find us and threaten us’
Even as
violence remains commonplace, the smugglers have adapted to the “one in, one
out” system, some returnees said. One Iranian who is no longer in France said
the Home Office had stirred up a “hornet’s nest”.
“Before,
people paid a smuggler to cross the Channel and never had to see the smugglers
again,” he said. “Now we are back in France, the smugglers can find us and
threaten us – sometimes they force us to work for them in the Jungle because
they say we did not pay them to cross the Channel to the UK. Other times they
try to make us cross the Channel again to break the ‘one in, one out’ deal.”
He
described smugglers jumping into dinghies leaving France for the UK to evade
French police on the beaches. “They are put into detention in the UK but are
happy to go back to France because that is where they are working,” he said.
Because
of “one in, one out”, smugglers were offering a new deal saying that anyone who
was detained on arrival in the UK did not have to pay for their journey, he
said. Sometimes returnees were offered a “free” second trip to the UK because
the first trip ended with a return to France.
The
missing: ‘Do you have any news about my son?’
While
many returnees have deliberately gone under the radar, a smaller number are
missing. Their friends and family say they have had no news from them, but
believe they were threatened by smugglers after returning to France.
The
Guardian spoke to the distraught mother of one Kurdish returnee to France. “Do
you have any news about my son?” she asked.
“He told
me the UK was the only country where he felt safe. When he reached the UK he
told me there were 80 on his boat, 10 were detained and the rest taken to a
hotel. He had issues with the smugglers because he jumped into a boat without
paying. We are all so scared of the smugglers. While others he travelled with
are now safe in the UK, he is missing. I believe that if he was alive he would
have called me. As his mum I just have a feeling that something has happened to
him.”
Another
man, a Somali, was in touch with the Guardian at the beginning of January by
email, soon after his forcible return to France.
“I have
not applied for asylum in France because France will send me to Germany and
Germany will send me to Somalia,” he said. “I am a victim and I am at the
deepest point of despair.”
The UK
authorities had determined with “positive conclusive grounds” that he was a
victim of trafficking after being enslaved in his home country for 19 years.
That was his last message.
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