The UK will pay for 200 French officers to detain and deport people seeking asylum from some of the world\u2019s most oppressive and war-ravaged regimes under a new UK-France deal to try to reduce Channel crossings.<\/p>\n
In what is being billed as the first time the French government has agreed to target those heading to the UK in small boats, a removal site in Dunkirk will be used to hold people from 10 countries: Eritrea, Afghanistan, Iran, Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Iraq, Syria, Vietnam and Yemen. The Home Office<\/a> said they were the top 10 nationalities who crossed the Channel by small boat last year.<\/p>\n They would be detained by officers paid for by the UK and deported to their home countries or other EU countries they had passed through, officials said. The funding for this would come out of a \u00a3162m package to trial new approaches to prevent small boat crossings, which is in addition to a new three-year, \u00a3500m baseline deal with the French to boost enforcement action on beaches in northern France.<\/p>\n The detain-and-deport approach is part of a \u00a3162m extra \u201cpayment by results\u201d package, on top of the \u00a3500m baseline deal agreed for the next three years to March 2029.<\/p>\n Officials claim that hundreds, possibly thousands, of people will be detained under the targeting scheme. However, EU countries including France have previously struggled to deport people to neighbouring countries under the Dublin agreement.<\/p>\n Jo Cobley, the chief executive of Safe Passage International, said it was \u201cdisgraceful and unlawful\u201d to deport people to unsafe countries.<\/p>\n \u201cWith no accessible safe routes and the government\u2019s suspension of refugee family reunion, the only way to reach the UK to ask for protection is across the Channel \u2013 punishing people with detention, deportation threats and police violence does not change that,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s disgraceful, and unlawful, to return people to active war zones or where they face persecution, in countries like Afghanistan, Sudan and Iran, and to target people who would have very likely been granted protection in the UK.\u201d<\/p>\n Home Office sources said the UK would only ask for detainees to be deported if their home countries had been ruled to be safe, such as Vietnam.<\/p>\n Those asylum seekers who could not be sent to their home countries could be sent to third EU countries if they had already been processed and fingerprinted there, sources said.<\/p>\n Speaking to journalists in Dunkirk, Mahmood defended asking the French to remove people from Iran and Afghanistan if they had travelled through safe EU countries, saying that the EU has drawn up \u201cthe new pact on migration and asylum\u201d to allow EU members to do so.<\/p>\n