A first migrant was expelled from the United Kingdom to France this Thursday, September 18, since part of the Migration Agreement concluded this summer between the two countries, a dismissal that the Labor Government hosted, under pressure to reduce irregular immigration.
The Keir Starmer government, in difficulty facing the emergence of the reform of the party of the distant United Kingdom, has promised to stop the crossings of the United Kingdom channel, whose number has reached a record level since the beginning of the year, with more than 31,000 arrivals.
An agreement planned until 2026
According to the British Interior Ministry that announced this first derivation to a statement, this man arrived in England in August aboard a small boat. It is of Indian origin, a French government source said to the AFP, and was expelled aboard a commercial flight from the Air France company.
Completed in July during the state visit of French president Emmanuel Macron to the United Kingdom and entered into force at the beginning of August, this agreement establishes the return to France of migrants who arrived aboard small boats to the United Kingdom, in exchange for the shipment through the migrants channel in France, in the principle of “one for one.”
Highly criticized by the NGOs, this pilot agreement, scheduled to last until June 2026, is supposed to dissuade the crosses.
British Interior Minister Shabana Mahmood appointed the Ministry of Interior of the head of the office at home, greeted this first reference in a press release as an “important step to ensure” the country’s borders.
“This sends the message to the people who cross (the Canal de la Mancha) in small boats: if you illegally enter the United Kingdom, we will try to expel you,” he insisted.
Other flights that transport migrants to France are still scheduled for this week and the next ones, the Interior Ministry said. In the other way, the first authorized migrants to come to the United Kingdom will arrive “in the next few days” from France, according to the same source.
But “the French authorities are very cold and analyze the profiles of the people we want to send it back,” several sources told the AFP.
Legal and critical challenges of NGOs
On Tuesday, the British Government underwent a setback when the London Superior Court temporarily blocked the scheduled expulsion on the day after an erytrus migrant, who questioned his dismissal when the victim of human trafficking said.
The Government has decided to appeal this decision and announced that it would “examine” the legislation on modern slavery to avoid “bad” to avoid expulsions. NGOs are organized to help migrants present appeals.
The French association L’Auberge des Migrants significantly denounced “a cynical dribble of human life.”
For your spokesman, Stella Bosc, the agreement is sentenced to failure. “It’s a political exhibition and communication,” he said. Pierre Makhlouf, from the NGO for immigration detainees (IDB), also pointed out “a vagueness” that opens the way to numerous appeals.
A high pressure migration policy
According to the British media, two planes that would transport migrants to France earlier this week, finally took off without any migrant on board.
Since the beginning of August, the United Kingdom has begun to place migrants in detention in the context of this agreement highly criticized by NGOs. According to The Guardian newspaper, 92 people were arrested earlier this week pending their dismissal in France.
Since he came to power in July 2024, the Labor Government, who abandoned the conservative project to expel asylum seekers to Rwanda, acts on several fronts to try to reduce irregular immigration.
He has signed several cooperation agreements with other countries (Germany, Iraq, etc.), strengthened the border police media to combat smuggling networks. Some 35,000 migrants were expelled, a 13% increase for a year.
Source: BFM TV
