The first small boat migrants are due to be deported on commercial flights to France every day this week under the so-called one-in, one-out returns deal.
Dozens of migrants are due to be removed this week under the arrangement. The first migrants will join tourists and business travellers on an Air France flight on Monday, barring any last-minute legal challenges.
One of the messages sent to a migrant due for deportation on Tuesday, seen by The Times, said: “You will be removed from the UK on Air France Flight (AF) 1681 which departs from Heathrow Terminal 4 at 09:00 on 16/09/2025 and arrives in Paris, France at 11:20 on 16/09/2025.”
Migrants arriving in Dover in 2022
DANIEL LEAL/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
• Military sites for asylum seekers ‘cost more than hotels’
The migrant received a formal removal direction notice, which gives them five days’ notice of the Home Office’s intention to deport them, allowing them to seek final legal advice before the removal can take place.
Once all legal hurdles have been overcome, migrants will be escorted in secure vans from the Harmondsworth immigration removal centre next to Heathrow airport, where they have been detained since arriving on small boats last month.
Escorts from the private contractor Mitie Care & Custody will accompany them on their flight. The British and French governments are understood to be booking seats on commercial flights to keep costs down.
The Home Office spent more than £300,000 booking charter flights for the Rwanda scheme under the Conservatives, but none took off due to legal challenges. Four migrants moved to Rwanda under a voluntary form of the scheme.
The Home Office has refused to disclose how many migrants will be sent to France this week. It has kept information to a minimum because of concerns about legal challenges and because it fears people smugglers could use the information to change their tactics.
However, it is understood that fewer than 100 are scheduled to be removed this week.
Removal numbers depend on the readiness of asylum seekers moving the other way under the reciprocal terms of the treaty with France. An equal number will be flown from France to the UK. They have been accepted by the Home Office as meeting certain conditions, such as having family connections and being from a country with a high asylum grant rate.
Migrants attempting to leave Gravelines beach near Dunkirk in June
TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER JACK HILL
More than 100 migrants who arrived on small boats have been detained under the deal since it came into effect on August 6. While the Home Office has not disclosed the exact figure, it is only a small proportion of the 5,590 migrants who have arrived on small boats in the same period.
So far this year a record 31,026 migrants have arrived on small boats, 38 per cent higher than this time last year and 6 per cent more than the previous record-breaking year of 2022.
Edi Rama, the Albanian prime minister, told Times Radio on Sunday that the UK should pursue its crackdown on illegal immigration cautiously given the importance of the migrant population to the domestic workforce. He said: “Where the hell you will find the people to build your houses, to serve you the coffee, to be your taxi drivers, to be your truck drivers?”
The group Labour Together, which has close links with Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, and Steve Reed, the housing secretary, has submitted plans that would give areas with asylum hotels multimillion-pound “thank you” payments.
In an effort to recognise the impact of the hotels on deprived parts of the country, about 250 areas would each receive £4 million to spend on community facilities. The money would come from a £1 billion fund to be paid for by the eventual savings made from the £2.1 billion spent on hotel accommodation last year.
TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER JACK HILL
The government has committed itself to ending the use of hotels to house asylum seekers by 2029, which could save £1 billion. Sources said the proposal had been “widely circulated” in Whitehall and received a “positive response”.
Mahmood wants to speed the closure of the hotels by transferring migrants into disused military facilities. But Labour Together said that even when hotels closed there would be scarring effects. They said some hotels might never reopen because their owners would find it financially unviable, while for many areas the problem had become “emblematic of a system that’s not working for them”.
The think tank has proposed that communities with asylum hotels should be eligible for a one-off grant to invest in infrastructure, such as a children’s play park, or to refurbish sports venues or social clubs. The money could be used to bring local facilities, including pubs and shops, into public ownership — or indeed former asylum hotels.
“Many of these hotels used to be places where people got married or socialised with friends,” the group said. “Now they are often the most visible indication of state intervention in their neighbourhood, and emblematic of a system that’s not working for them.
“The fund above would be for communities to decide how to spend. But the government should also commit that no hotel will be left vacant.”