41 Asylum-Seeking Children Missing After UK Sends Them to France Under 'One In, One Out' Deal

At least 41 people whom human rights groups say were children have become uncontactable after being returned from the UK to France under the 'one in, one out' asylum scheme, according to NGOs working with migrants. The Home Office strongly disputes the claim, saying nobody whose age was in dispute was returned to France under the agreement.

The allegation was raised at a parliamentary meeting this week as scrutiny of the UK-France arrangement intensified ahead of its scheduled expiry on 1 October. The scheme allows eligible small-boat arrivals to be forcibly returned to France in exchange for other people being admitted legally to the UK from France.

The agreement was announced by then-Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron in July 2025 and was described by Starmer at the time as 'groundbreaking'. Since September 2025, about 1,400 people have been returned to France under the arrangement, according to figures cited in the Guardian.

Why the Asylum Scheme's Child Safeguards Matter

Maddie Harris, director of the Humans For Rights Network, told parliamentarians that several NGOs had compiled a list of at least 41 people they considered to be children or young people who had been returned to France.

The allegation carries particular significance because unaccompanied children are excluded from the UK-France agreement. The central dispute is therefore not simply whether the individuals were returned, but whether their ages had been disputed and how those cases were handled before removal.

The Home Office rejected the NGO claim outright.

'This is categorically untrue. Nobody has been returned to France where their age is in dispute,' the department told The Guardian.

It said detained people were informed of their right to legal representation and how to obtain it within 24 hours of arriving at an immigration removal centre. The department also said age assessments were carried out to maintain the integrity of border controls while ensuring that people who were genuinely under 18 received appropriate support.

That leaves an important distinction in the reporting. The NGOs say people they regarded as children were unlawfully returned. The government says it returned no one whose age was in dispute. The available evidence supplied for this report does not independently resolve that disagreement.

There are separate concerns about age assessments and detention.

The Independent Monitoring Boards have reported that almost 100 people identified as children had been detained as adults in connection with the scheme. Jane Leech, interim chair of the monitoring boards, raised concerns that people were being detained for the scheme when the Home Office was holding more people than it could remove.

Hundreds Returned to France Are No Longer in Contact

The wider question of what happens after people are returned has also become harder to answer.

French politicians told The Guardian that only about 200 people forcibly returned under the arrangement remained in contact with French authorities, while hundreds of others were said to have gone underground elsewhere in Europe. The Guardian also interviewed dozens of returnees who were no longer in contact with French authorities.

Some of those returnees said they had stopped communicating with French authorities because of what they described as hostility, pressure to return to their countries of origin or fears of being sent onwards to other European countries, including Bulgaria.

The Home Office said what happened to people after they were returned to France was a matter for French authorities. France's interior ministry declined to comment on the reported cases.

The scale of the returns remains relatively small compared with Channel crossings. About 1,400 people have been returned since September 2025, representing roughly 4% of more than 32,000 small-boat arrivals recorded during the period cited in the reporting.

The arrangement has also faced legal scrutiny beyond the dispute over age. In July, the High Court ruled that a Home Office policy removing a reconsideration stage for negative trafficking decisions was unlawful. That judgment concerned the handling of trafficking-related decisions and did not amount to a ruling that the UK-France returns agreement itself was unlawful.

Meanwhile, the political future of the scheme remains uncertain. The agreement is due to expire on 1 October, with the Home Secretary reportedly seeking an extension and expansion. France has indicated that it wants a European arrangement rather than continuing to bear responsibility for returned small-boat arrivals largely on its own.

The parliamentary meeting also heard concerns about the condition of some people after their return. Nihal Osman, a programme coordinator for Médecins Sans Frontières, said asylum seekers were arriving in France in a 'deeply concerning' condition, with some displaying symptoms including flashbacks, acute anxiety, self-harm, suicidal thoughts and psychological breakdown.

'What we are witnessing is the accumulation of trauma on trauma,' Osman said.

Alex Sobel, chair of parliament's joint committee on human rights, said he was 'deeply concerned' about the continuing securitisation of the French border, claiming that French police were using measures that would be unacceptable for British police.

With the agreement approaching its October deadline, the disputed cases involving people whose ages were questioned leave a particularly sensitive issue unresolved: whether safeguards intended to exclude unaccompanied children from the scheme were properly applied in every case.