The home secretary Shabana Mahmood has vowed to fight “vexatious, last-minute” legal claims from asylum seekers fighting their removal under the “one in, one out” deal with France.
Ms Mahmood pledged that France deportations would still go ahead this week and called a court decision to block the removal of an Eritrean asylum seeker “intolerable”.
The High Court granted a last-minute injunction to a 25-year-old Eritrean on Tuesday evening, halting his removal on an early flight to Paris on Wednesday.
Labour is under pressure to demonstrate that its returns deal with France will actually work after scheduled flights on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday left the UK without any migrants on board.
Ms Mahmood said on Wednesday afternoon that “last minute attempts to frustrate a removal are intolerable, and I will fight them at every step”.
She said the Home Office would appeal the High Court’s temporary stay of removal in a bid to speed up deportations.
The judge has given the Eritrean asylum seeker, who is still in detention, 14 days to challenge a Home Office decision that he doesn’t qualify for modern slavery support.
The 25-year-old said he was a victim of trafficking in Libya and as such was entitled to help under the UK’s National Referral Mechanism. He was given time to challenge his negative decision after the Home Office conceded that he would not be able to pursue the claim from France.
Lawyers told the court that he would not be able to argue for modern slavery support from “the streets of France”. There was a real risk that he could be made destitute if returned to France, the court was told.
However Ms Mahmood said: “Migrants suddenly deciding that they are a modern slave on the eve of their removal, having never made such a claim before, make a mockery of our laws and this country’s generosity”.
She added: “I will fight to end vexatious, last-minute claims. I will robustly defend the British public’s priorities in any court”.
Government minister Liz Kendall said on Wednesday that “this is one person” and “it is not going to undermine the fundamental basis of this deal”.
She added: “This decision is disappointing, but it won’t prevent the rest of that deal going ahead”.
Labour MP Nadia Whittome condemned the scheme as “a ridiculous policy that would be more at home in a Reform manifesto”. She said the plan was “unworkable, cruel and unfair”.
“You can deport all the immigrants you want but it’s not going to improve people’s living standards”, she added.
Kim Johnson, Labour MP for Liverpool Riverside, compared the scheme to the Tories’ failed plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, saying: “Starmer’s ‘one in, one out’ deal is a complete shambles, morally and practically it’s Rwanda mark two. He took it straight from the far-right playbook, boosting Reform talking points and emboldening fascists marching on our streets this weekend”.
She warned that “Labour can’t out Reform Reform, and we shouldn’t try”.
Further migrants had been due to be removed to France on Wednesday and throughout the week but the scheme is now in jeopardy, with the Home Office refusing to give operational details about when the first deportations might take place.
A French interior ministry spokesperson has said that they still expect the first migrants to arrive in France under the scheme this week, and the first people will be sent to the UK on Saturday.
It comes as new signs are put up around Calais warning asylum seekers that the new UK-France treaty is now in force.
The posters from the UK and French governments warn migrants that “if you arrive in the UK by small boat illegally, you now risk being deported and will not be eligible to re-enter the UK nor remain in France without the legal right to”.
Lachlan Macrae, from the group Calais Food Collective, who support migrants in northern France with food and water, said: “Many people have specific circumstances relating to torture and trauma in other countries, which means that they would likely bring challenges in the court for any deportation. However, that doesn’t mean that this [messaging] is not affecting people.
“Just like the Rwanda scheme, it’s causing fear and confusion. Every da,y people come up and ask about the scheme, it’s a form of weaponised uncertainty”.
The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants is also organising a phone and email campaign against Air France, one of the carriers for the deportations. In a briefing about the action, they call on people to contact the airline and tell them that the company and the pilot can refuse to fly people who are being deported.
Sile Reynolds, head of asylum advocacy at charity Freedom from Torture, said that rushing deportations to France “denies people a fair hearing and the chance to evidence their vulnerability, as the High Court’s recent decision to delay the removal of one young survivor of trafficking clearly shows”.
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