Trafficking victims deported to France anyway
The Home Office plans to deport trafficking victims to France on Thursday, days after a court ruled the policy unlawful.
Dozens of potential trafficking victims are due to be deported to France on Thursday, defying a High Court ruling that the policy is unlawful.
The Home Office says removals under the UK-France “one in, one out” scheme will continue regardless, days after Mr Justice Sheldon ruled that the department acted unlawfully by stripping trafficking victims of the right to have a negative decision reconsidered before being sent to France. The five lead claimants who brought the case, granted anonymity as EXR, GIP, HRE, AYA and KAG, are four Eritreans and a Sudanese national who arrived on small boats and were earmarked for return.
Trafficking victims deported to France despite the ruling One detainee told the Guardian: “The Home Office doesn’t listen to us when we try to tell them we are victims of trafficking. They just send us to France whatever we tell them.” A young survivor known as “Eden”, tortured and trafficked in Libya, was held for around a month in adult detention before a local authority assessed her as a child. Government figures show at least 141 age-disputed young people have been detained since the scheme began in August 2025; at least 64 were later found to be children, and 18 of them were removed to France anyway.
The number the Home Office tried to bury
The right the department tried to abolish, by quietly amending Modern Slavery Act guidance on 17 September 2025, has existed since 2013. In 2025 alone, 79% of initial negative trafficking decisions were overturned on reconsideration, restoring protection to 1,525 people the Home Office had first rejected. That is the department’s own record of how often it gets this wrong.
The Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has dismissed such claims as migrants “suddenly deciding that they are a modern slave on the eve of their removal” to “make a mockery of our laws.” A Home Office spokesperson said last-minute claims “must not be used to frustrate the removal of illegal migrants” and confirmed the department will appeal the ruling while continuing removals in the meantime.
Officials knew what awaited these people before they signed the deal. Internal Home Office assessments, disclosed in the litigation, warned in advance that removed claimants would likely be treated as “unofficial” trafficking victims once in France, because most were not trafficked there and are not French nationals. They sent the plane anyway. More than 1,000 people have been removed to France since the scheme began, and campaigners say many have since lost contact with the organisations trying to support them.
