‘One in, one out’: what has happened to asylum seekers forced to return to France?

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

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 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.

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.

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”.

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 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.”

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.