Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s deal was halted after a migrant claimed he would be left destitute if returned to Paris. Photo / Getty Images
British Prime Minister’s Keir Starmer’s “one in, one out” migrant deal was dealt a major blow today after the High Court blocked the deportation of an asylum-seeker to France.
A judge granted a 25-year-old Eritrean man a temporary last-minute injunction, stopping him from being removed on a flight that had been due to leave tonight NZT, after he claimed he would be made “destitute” if returned to Paris.
The human rights claim – the first challenge to reach a court over the United Kingdom-France deal – will cast fresh doubts on the scheme after two deportation flights failed to go ahead yesterday and today following legal challenges and protests.
The Home Office detained nearly 100 Channel migrants on arrival in the UK last month under the ‘one in, one out’ scheme, pledging to send them back to France “within weeks”.
Ministers now face the prospect of further legal challenges and delays, with at least seven of the migrants earmarked for removal this week.
Chris Philp, the shadow Home Secretary, said: “The Government’s latest Channel migrant gimmick is now in complete disarray.
“Two flights, a legal defeat in court and zero deportations. Not a single migrant has been removed, yet thousands more continue to arrive.
“On Monday, I told the new Home Secretary in Parliament that unless they disapply the Human Rights Act for immigration cases, their meagre returns deal would collapse in court. She refused to listen, and here is the predictable result.”
Experts said there would be further, similar challenges. Emma Ginn, director of Medical Justice, a charity assisting 16 of the detained migrants, expressed concern over “the fact that many of them have histories of torture, trafficking, slavery, and sexual abuse”.
David Wood, former director-general of immigration enforcement, said: “I do not think the Home Office will get any flights off the ground for weeks, even months”.
“Individuals will bring challenges under human rights laws and claim that the use of the policy to exclude them from having their asylum claims considered is unlawful.”
Earlier today, Downing Street denied that Starmer’s deal was a shambles or that it was “powerless” in the face of the courts. A spokesman insisted that returns would take place “imminently”.
Under the deal, signed in July by the Prime Minister and Emmanuel Macron, the French President, Britain agreed to detain Channel migrants and send them back to France in return for taking a similar number of asylum-seekers with family ties to the UK.
The first migrants earmarked for deportation were issued with removal directions last week, giving them five days’ notice before deportation.
The Home Office had planned to return Channel migrants on commercial Air France flights from Heathrow to Paris on almost every day this week, but none have been taken back so far.
The challenges echo those made to the previous Conservative Government’s Rwanda deportation plan, which Starmer repeatedly branded unworkable and cancelled on his first day in office.
However, unlike Rwanda, these are challenges over individual cases rather than the whole scheme.
The Telegraph revealed yesterday that the first migrant to be returned was pulled off his Air France flight.
Plans to fly a second migrant out today were also scuppered after his lawyers claimed his experience of being tortured and trafficked should prevent him from being returned to France.
Justice Sheldon, who granted the temporary injunction blocking the deportation of the Eritrean migrant, said that more time was needed to investigate his claim that he was a potential victim of human trafficking.
The court was told he and his mother had travelled to Ethiopia when he was a young child and that he had been trafficked from there to Libya in 2023.
He then made his way via Italy to France, and arrived in Britain by small boat across the Channel on August 12 after his mother paid £1000 to smugglers, court papers said.
His barrister, Sonali Naik KC, said that as a “vulnerable” victim of trafficking who had been shot in one of his legs, there was “a serious issue to be tried” about whether or not he would be destitute if he was returned.
She acknowledged there was a “public policy issue” over how the Government aimed to combat Channel crossings, but said: “The real risk of destitution which we say is made out in our claim cannot be overridden by the Secretary of State’s broader public policy objectives”.
Kate Grange, KC, for the Home Office, said in written submissions that it was reasonable to expect the man to claim asylum in France, not least because he had been offered multiple places to stay.
She said: “The claimant asserts that he was destitute, but no less than two charities had indicated they would provide him with accommodation if he claimed asylum”.
“It is no answer that the claimant had friends who had claimed asylum and were living on the street, or that he wasn’t sure how long accommodation was being offered. He could have claimed asylum.”
Justice Sheldon said: “There is a serious issue to be tried in relation to the trafficking claim and whether or not the Secretary of State has carried out her investigating duties in a legal manner”.
The Home Office is believed to have booked seats on Air France commercial flights to Paris stretching over at least the next fortnight, although with small single-figure daily numbers.
France has been planning to fly asylum seekers to the UK this Saturday as part of the agreement.
A French Interior Ministry spokesman said: “The first migrants are still due to arrive in France from the UK this week and the first to leave France will do so starting Saturday”.
Under the terms of the treaty, however, each government can reject applications if the numbers are not balanced.
Most earmarked for removal are understood to be from countries with high asylum grant rates, but also accounting for the highest number of crossings, including Eritrea, Afghanistan, Sudan and Iran.
Channel migrants have crossed in record numbers this year, with 31,026 arriving so far, up 38% on this time last year and 6% more than the previous record-breaking year of 2022.
Since the deal came into effect, 5590 migrants have arrived.
Starmer and Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary, have acknowledged the scheme will initially be piloted with smaller numbers, but aim to ramp it up to be a deterrent to further crossings.
Mahmood is also planning law changes to restrict the ability of migrants to use human rights laws to avoid deportations.
Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, claimed that the Government was “not telling you the truth” over its immigration plans after the deportation was blocked.
“Please do not take seriously anything this Government says about dealing with illegal immigration. They’re not telling you the truth.”
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