Hundreds of asylum seekers removed from UK to France have disappeared, say NGOs

Hundreds of asylum seekers – including at least 41 age-disputed children – removed to France under the “one in, one out” deal have disappeared, human rights organisations have said.

The one in, one out pilot scheme was hailed as “groundbreaking” by the former prime minister Keir Starmer when he and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, announced it in July 2025. Under a treaty drawn up for this agreement, it forcibly returns one small-boat asylum seeker to France in exchange for another asylum seeker brought legally to the UK from France.

The deal is due to expire on 1 October and at the moment it is not known what, if anything, will replace it.

The home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, is reportedly pushing for the deal to be extended and scaled up, but the French government has indicated that it wants to see the scheme expanded Europewide rather than France having to accept small-boat returnees alone.

One French politician told the Guardian that so far, France’s overtures to other countries to take back a share of small-boat asylum seekers had received a negative response.

About 1,400 small-boat arrivals have been returned to France since September 2025, just 4% of 32,000 who have crossed the Channel since the deal was signed.

These figures do not include the significant minority who have come back to the UK a second time, some of whom are now living under the radar here. The UK and France amended the treaty to allow for people returning to the UK in lorries to be sent back to France a second time.

At a meeting in parliament this week chaired by Lord German, a general rapporteur on asylum and migration policy for the parliamentary assembly for the Council of Europe, and Alex Sobel, the new chair of parliament’s joint committee on human rights, parliamentarians were told about the disappearances and other concerns about the scheme by NGO representatives working on the ground.

Maddie Harris, the director of the Humans For Rights Network, said several NGOs had between them compiled a list of at least 41 age-disputed children and young people whom they claimed had been unlawfully returned to France. It is unlawful to detain lone children in adult immigration detention centres, and they are excluded from the one in one out treaty.

The Home Office disputed this and told the Guardian: “This is categorically untrue. Nobody has been returned to France where their age is in dispute.

“Every detained person is advised of their right to legal representation and how they can obtain such representation within 24 hours of arrival at an immigration removal centre. Age assessments are carried out to maintain the integrity of our border, while ensuring those genuinely under 18 receive the appropriate support.”

However, the prisons and detention Independent Monitoring Boards have reported that almost a hundred children had been identified as unlawfully detained as adults for the scheme. The IMBs’ interim chair, Jane Leech, attended the meeting and raised concerns that some people were being unlawfully detained for the scheme because the Home Office was “detaining more people than they can remove”.

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French politicians have told the Guardian that only 200 people forcibly returned to France were still in contact with the authorities there, with hundreds of others having gone underground in countries across Europe.

The Guardian has interviewed dozens of returnees who are no longer in contact with the French authorities and are living underground in Europe. They say they have disappeared due to hostility from the French authorities, pressure to return to their home countries where they believe they will be unsafe, or the threat of being forced back to other European countries such as Bulgaria that they passed through on their journeys.

Home Office sources said that what happened to people once they were returned to France was a matter for the French authorities. France’s interior ministry declined to comment on the disappearances.

Harris said the forced return of lone children to France was “shameful”. She said: “We support many children detained under this scheme and attempt to secure their release. However, at least 41 children have been removed from the UK to France and their whereabouts is currently unknown. The vast majority of these children have experienced acute violence and exploitation and are now without protection somewhere in Europe.”

Nihal Osman, a programme coordinator for Médecins Sans Frontières, told the parliamentary meeting that asylum seekers were returned to France from the UK in a “deeply concerning” condition, with many displaying severe psychological symptoms such as flashbacks, acute anxiety, self-harm, suicidal thoughts and psychological breakdown.

“What we are witnessing is the accumulation of trauma on trauma,” she said.

Sobel said he was “deeply concerned” about the ongoing securitisation of the French border to prevent asylum seekers crossing the Channel to the UK. “The French police are doing things it would be unacceptable for British police to do,” he said.