Good Riddance to the ‘One In, One Out’ Deportation Scheme

Por Joanna Pienkowska — Tribune

On October 1, the government quietly ended the ‘groundbreaking’ migration policy that the Home Office had announced only a year prior. The short-lived Anglo-French ‘one in, one out’ deal, put in force in August 2025 and championed by Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood after she took the role a month later, ran a state-sanctioned cross-border trade in human beings. People who crossed the Channel in a small boat were deported to France, and in exchange, another individual was allowed to enter the UK from France. After deporting more than 1,400 people, the scheme was scrapped without so much as a press release or an official statement to mark its conclusion.This disastrous policy was sold as both a ‘safe route’ for seeking asylum and a deterrent against dangerous journeys across the Channel. But as many migration and refugee charities from across the UK and France argued, the ‘safety’ logic was inherently a contradiction that relied on one person surviving a traumatic and life-threatening crossing only to be detained and deported so that another could enter. It functioned as a twisted zero-sum lottery and depended on the very dangers it purported to deter.Under international law, claiming asylum is lawful however a person arrives. The 1951 Refugee Convention recognised that fleeing persecution forces people to breach certain immigration rules and protects refugees from being penalised for how they enter a country. Despite this, the UK government continues to punish those who arrive here to seek asylum, even though a person can only claim asylum once they’re on UK soil and there is no way for them to reach the UK except to cross the Channel.In January 2026, over 100 people detained under the scheme issued a collective statement calling on human rights organisations to investigate their treatment and conditions. They reported being ‘subjected to extreme physical, psychological, and emotional abuse’, and that people were ‘mentally deteriorating due to constant fear, harassment, and uncertainty about their fate’. Peaceful overnight protests were held in two detention centres. Reports say officers responded with riot shields, dogs and tear gas as detainees pleaded to not be taken to France by force.A study by Medical Justice of its clients detained under the scheme found that every single individual of the twenty they assessed showed clinical evidence of a history of torture, ill-treatment or human trafficking, as well as serious mental health conditions including PTSD, depression and anxiety. Many described experiencing severe violence and traumatic events in France before arriving in the UK, including witnessing killings by smugglers or facing death threats themselves. Those deported to France under this scheme are thrown back into EU regulation, meaning they face the threat of secondary deportation to countries they previously passed through where they may have faced severe human rights abuses.Children were supposed to be excluded from this operation. However, JRS UK and Humans for Rights Network (HfRN) found that at least 141 age-disputed children and young people had been detained under the scheme, highlighting serious failures in safeguarding and protection. The Home Office’s own figures revealed that over a nine-month period, nearly 100 children had been wrongly detained as adults as part of the scheme. Some of them were nonetheless deported to France.While the Labour government that came into office in 2024 cancelled the Rwanda deal of its predecessors, what it built maintained the very same logic: declare claims ‘inadmissible’, refuse to hear someone’s grounds for asylum, and instead detain and deport them to another country. Starmer proudly promised the deal with France was not about performative ‘gimmicks’. In practice, it continued the theatre of control we have come to expect from politicians who are pandering to racists and scapegoating migrants for their failures.The government’s human trading scheme was not a standalone policy. It was soon followed by the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025, which has led to criminal charges for those who at one point in their journey steered the boat to safety. In April 2026, the UK signed a three-year, £662 million deal with France for new riot-trained police units, surveillance drones and helicopters in northern France, as well as a new detention centre in Dunkirk. Under Labour, immigration raids have reached the ‘highest levels in UK history’, and the detention estate is expanding. The government reopened Campsfield IRC in December 2025 after seven years of closure and despite strong local opposition.In September 2026, just before the ‘one in, one out’ programme closed, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood reopened the UK Resettlement Scheme and announced new community, university and employer sponsorship routes. Seeing this as a hopeful pivot would be a mistake. Such routes are small and strictly defined, meaning they are only good for the few hundred people who qualify. For the majority of refugees, they function as a tool of exclusion, criminalising and justifying border violence against those who enter outside of the route’s narrow parameters.According to reports, Prime Minister Andy Burnham wanted the Anglo-French refugee trading operation to continue, and in the end it closed not because of the immense harm it caused, but because it didn’t go far enough to reach its desired scale. A government spokesperson stressed that ‘lessons learned’ would help ‘accelerate efforts’ to deport people seeking asylum going forward.Small boat arrival figures are reportedly low, but at what cost? Performative cruelty only fuels a politics that normalises and demands more cruelty. It’s government ministers, not asylum seekers, who need to change course.

Fonte: Tribune