An Eritrean man has been flown out of the UK under the government’s “one in, one out” deal with France, after a last-minute court bid to delay the departure failed.
The second cross-Channel migrant to be removed from the UK under the policy was accompanied by Home Office officials on the Air France flight from Heathrow Airport to Paris.
It comes a little over a month since the UK and France agreed the year-long pilot scheme of exchanges of migrants in the hope of deterring small boat crossings.
The first flight under the agreement returned one person, an Indian national, to France on Thursday.
The man, wearing a white hoodie, was accompanied by three officials wearing Home Office passes as the flight departed at 06:15 BST.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said the first return demonstrated to people attempting small boat crossings “if you enter the UK illegally, we will seek to remove you”.
The Eritrean man arrived in England on a small boat in August.
His lawyers had argued that he may have been the victim of human trafficking.
In a ruling after a three-hour emergency hearing on Thursday, the presiding judge said there was no legal justification to delay the transport of the unnamed man.
Mr Justice Sheldon said there was “significant public interest” in removing him, noting that the home secretary was pursuing a policy to combat dangerous people smuggling.
He would instead have an opportunity to make his case in France.
“There is no serious issue to be tried in this case that the claimant has been denied procedural fairness,” said the judge.
The Eritrean man said he fled his home country in 2019 because of forced conscription – and he spent time in Ethiopia, South Sudan and Libya before coming to Europe.
He said he had lived in France, sleeping rough, and eventually made his way to Dunkirk to try to cross to England.
But in his ruling, Mr Justice Sheldon noted the man had given differing accounts of his allegations of trafficking, and so it was open to the home office to conclude that “his account of trafficking could not reasonably be believed”.
The judgement came just hours after the Home Office changed its policy on how to handle modern day slavery claims from English Channel migrants, to make it harder for them to resist being sent to France.
The new policy means that a migrant who is refused protection in the UK because they have suffered slavery or trafficking may only challenge that decision after they have been flown out of the country.
The rule change also came after a different Eritrean man facing a return to France won a temporary delay on modern slavery grounds. The government said it would appeal against that decision.
On Thursday, US President Donald Trump weighed in on illegal immigration to the UK at the end of his state visit.
During a press conference with Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, he suggested using the military to combat small boat crossings.
Sir Keir countered by affirming that the UK had “a number of cooperation deals with other countries” in place and that the government is taking the issue “incredibly seriously”.
The Home Office says that more flights are planned in the coming days, but it is not clear how many passengers will be booked on to each one because of ongoing legal challenges – or threats of them.
Around 100 men are currently in immigration removal centres near Heathrow under the scheme. Each one was detained after arriving in the UK on a small boat and told they were potentially eligible to be returned to France.
The “one in, one out” deal is intended to deter people from turning to smugglers to cross the Channel because of the risk they could be sent back.
It proposes that, for each migrant the UK returns to France, another migrant with a strong case for asylum in the UK will come in return.
Neither government has suggested that the plan will smash the crossings on its own.
Around 5,590 migrants have reached the UK since the scheme came into effect at the start of August.
