The High Court has ordered the Home Office to bring back from France a Sudanese asylum seeker who was forcibly removed there under the UK-France 'one in one out' scheme, in the first such ruling since the policy took effect. Mr Justice Sheldon struck down a Home Office policy change that had refused asylum seekers the right to have their trafficking claims reconsidered after an initial rejection. The judge granted the man's legal challenge and directed his return to British soil. (The Guardian)

The man, a Sudanese national and survivor of torture, was among five asylum seekers who challenged the home secretary's policy change. He had been removed to France on 27 November 2025. Authorities had identified reasonable grounds that he is a victim of trafficking, a threshold that triggers protection obligations under the UK's modern slavery framework. The judge found those grounds were not properly reconsidered before his removal, which forms the basis of the order for his return.

A second asylum seeker, also sent to France by the Home Office and part of the same legal challenge, will have his trafficking case reconsidered in France. Depending on the outcome, he too may be brought back to the UK. The High Court granted both the Home Office and the asylum seekers permission to appeal on various points in the judgment, meaning the legal framework underpinning the policy remains unsettled pending appellate review.

The 'one in one out' arrangement forcibly removes some individuals who cross the English Channel in small boats, in exchange for admitting a comparable number from northern France to the UK through legal routes. As of March 2026, 377 migrants had been returned to France and 380 admitted to the UK under the agreement. (InfoMigrants) The treaty underpinning the scheme is the UK-France Treaty 2025, which was the subject of a separate approved judgment by Fordham J (case EXR AC 2025 LON 004527, approved for hand-down on 25 June 2026), addressing the standard of review for judicial determination and proposed removals to France. (judiciary.uk)

The ruling lands amid conflicting signals on Channel crossings. Small boat arrivals are down more than 40% compared with the same period the previous year. Yet in the past week alone, more than 1,000 people arrived via small boats, and on the preceding Thursday four people died attempting the crossing. The combination of a declining annual trend with acute weekly surges and continued loss of life points to operational pressure that persists regardless of the headline figures.

Emily Soothill of the firm Deighton Pierce Glynn, who represented the client ordered to be brought back, welcomed the decision. Elizabeth Cole, a solicitor at Duncan Lewis, represented an asylum seeker client in France who participated in the legal challenge and also welcomed the ruling. The involvement of two major public-law firms signals that the litigation is being treated as a test case with implications extending beyond the individual claimants.

The broader stakes here concern the procedural safeguards available to individuals identified as potential trafficking victims within a fast-track removal framework. By striking down the policy that denied reconsideration of trafficking claims after an initial rejection, Mr Justice Sheldon has effectively ruled that the Home Office cannot treat a first-instance negative trafficking decision as final when removal to a third country is at stake. The order to return the Sudanese man from France is a remedy that requires the state to reverse a removal already carried out, a meaningful constraint on executive discretion in the immigration context.

Whether the Home Office's appeal narrows or overturns that constraint will shape how the 'one in one out' scheme operates going forward, particularly for individuals whose trafficking indicators emerge or are inadequately assessed before removal. With 757 people already moved between the two countries under the treaty as of March, the procedural question of how and when trafficking claims are evaluated is not marginal to the scheme's operation but central to its legality. The Court of Appeal's eventual determination on the permitted grounds of appeal will determine whether the current judgment establishes durable precedent or becomes a provisional ruling superseded at the next tier.