Migrant children are disembarked from a U.K. Border Force vessel on June 12, 2024. (Photo by Ben … More Stansall / AFP) (Photo by BEN STANSALL/AFP via Getty Images)

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The U.K. arm of a global refugee charity has spoken out against the government reportedly considering a plan to force rejected asylum seekers to reception facilities outside the country. The plan – in the early stages of consideration according to multiple sources – has provoked condemnation from civil society groups and NGOs, amid a charged political atmosphere over irregular migration in the United Kingdom.

The government, under Prime Minister Keir Starmer, is reported to be considering sending people to what are colloquially known as ‘return hubs’ – essentially reception and detention facilities in foreign countries for people forced out of the U.K. The idea has been around for some time, and has been gaining considerable popularity among European policymakers and even the European Union’s executive arm.

Such schemes are rife with legal and logistical issues, and previous attempts – most notably the U.K.’s own similar Rwanda scheme and Italy’s current $720m Albania scheme – have proved very costly to taxpayers while doing little of what they’re supposed to do. Asylum seekers and irregular migrants are generally protected under various human rights conventions the U.K. and EU member states are signatory to, and in many cases courts have ruled such expulsions unlawful. Theories of so-called ‘deterrence’ effects, whereby future prospective irregular migrants are dissuaded by seeing what might happen to them under such schemes – have little evidence behind them.

Nonetheless, in a political environment in which the government under Starmer feel under pressure to reduce the arrival of people for fear of losing electoral ground to parties further to the right, the Prime Minister has pledged to ‘tackle’ the perceived problem. This despite him having previously condemend the aforementioned Rwanda plan under his Conservative predecessors.

Aside from the logistical and cost issues, many civil society groups and NGOs have denounced such schemes on moral and humanitarian grounds. The latest to do so – the U.K. arm of the influential Jesuit Refugee Services (JRS) charity – has said a scheme to send rejected asylum seekers to the Balkans would be “deeply harmful” to the people it affects.

In particular, JRS UK argue that ongoing dysfunction in the U.K.’s asylum system could mean that many people who otherwise would eventually be recognized as in genuine need of shelter are expelled before they are able to demonstrate their case.

“At JRS UK, we work with people who have been refused asylum and declared ‘appeal rights exhausted,’” said policy officer Dr Sophie Cartwright. “So often, they have been badly let down by the government’s hostile and broken asylum system. Indeed, every year, thousands of people wrongly refused asylum are recognized as refugees following fresh asylum claims. Yet under these new proposals they would be removed from the U.K. and face incarceration in another country.”

Commenting to the BBC on these issues, a government spokesperson described the situation as “a shared challenge” requiring consideration of “the widest possible set of options with a completely open mind.” The spokesperson went on to say that “any scheme we’d consider would always need to meet the test of being affordable, workable and legal.”