Only a fraction of Channel arrivals were returned despite high financial and political costs.
London
The United Kingdom has ended its one in, one out migration agreement with France after a year long pilot program returned only around 4 percent of the migrants who arrived in Britain by small boat. The Home Office confirmed that no new cases are being processed under the scheme, which was due to expire on October 1.
Known operationally as Operation Hillmore, the agreement allowed Britain to return certain asylum seekers who had crossed the English Channel irregularly from France. In exchange, the United Kingdom accepted an equivalent number of asylum seekers from France through legal routes, prioritizing vulnerable nationalities and people with family or other links to Britain.
Official figures show that 1,087 people were returned to France between August 2025 and June 2026, while 1,117 people were transferred legally to the United Kingdom. During the same period, 27,920 migrants reached Britain in small boats. The disparity became one of the strongest arguments against continuing the arrangement in its existing form.
Cost also became politically sensitive. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood told Parliament that each return cost British taxpayers an average of approximately £56,000, equivalent to about €65,500. The expense raised questions about whether the pilot offered sufficient deterrent value compared with its administrative and financial burden.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham has argued that Brexit complicated Britain’s ability to manage Channel migration because the country lost mechanisms for cooperation available when it was part of the European Union. His government says it now intends to combine stronger enforcement against trafficking networks with expanded safe and legal migration routes.
France has also pushed for a different model. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez has argued that responsibility for irregular migration cannot rest primarily on France simply because migrants depart from its northern coastline. Paris wants a broader European strategy involving stronger controls at countries of first entry and greater responsibility sharing across the Schengen area.
The migration route remains dangerous despite declining crossings in 2026. Nearly 197,000 people have crossed the Channel in small boats since the route became established, while smuggling networks have increasingly experimented with departure points outside France, including Belgium.
The end of the bilateral pilot does not resolve the underlying problem. It instead reinforces a structural reality exposed by Brexit: irregular migration across the Channel cannot be managed effectively through border enforcement alone when the route connects Britain to a wider European migration system.
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