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More than 100 asylum seekers held at two immigration detention centres have staged overnight protests against the UK’s controversial “one in, one out” scheme with France.
Officers with riot shields, dogs and teargas arrived to quell the protests.
The first “one in, one out” flight of 2026 is understood to have taken off on Thursday morning after a flight last week was cancelled.
Asylum seekers detained for removal to France under “one in, one out” have produced four reports documenting their concerns about the scheme and their detention conditions.
The protests on Wednesday night were organised across the two main detention centres used to hold people for the scheme, Harmondsworth, near Heathrow, and Brook House, near Gatwick.
Detainees told the Guardian they were peacefully resisting being taken to the airport because they believed that while France was generally a safe country, it was not safe for some of them who had received threats from people smugglers. Some also fear that under European Union law they will be returned to another EU country and from there forcibly returned to their country of origin, where they believe their lives may be in danger.
They raised concerns about what they consider to be the random nature of the “one in, one out” scheme, which allows the majority of passengers on a dinghy to have their asylum claims processed in the UK while a minority are detained in preparation for forcible removal to France. The scheme has been called ineffective by those who support asylum seekers and those who oppose them.
Before the flight on Thursday just 193 people had been forcibly removed to France, with 195 legally brought to the UK in turn. While just 32 people have crossed the Channel so far this year, thought to be a result of adverse weather conditions, 803 people crossed in 13 boats on 20 December, a few months after “one in, one out” was introduced, indicating the scheme was not yet serving as a deterrent in the way the government had hoped.
At the beginning of the action on Wednesday detainees sent a message explaining why they were protesting, saying: “We are asylum seekers, we are not criminals we are not animals. Between 41,000 people who crossed the Channel, why just we 200 persons are in detention? End the detention of asylum seekers. End our pain.”
At first the protest proceeded peacefully and the asylum seekers sent a message saying: “All is good. More than 60 here [at Harmondsworth] and 50 at Brook House, all protesting in a very nice and safe way. We are in the hall they locked the doors. We can’t go to toilet or have a rest or eat and drink. We don’t know what they gonna do next. Please help us. Do whatever u can for us.”
But the protesters said things became more violent. One detainee, who told the Guardian he had significant reasons to fear smugglers in France, said the situation deteriorated when officers with riot shields and dogs were brought in.
He sent a message saying: “Maybe they coming for us,” followed shortly afterwards by: “They come now and they bring [police dogs].”
Asked if he was OK, he said: “No.”
The man’s last communication with the Guardian was at 2.14am on Thursday morning. He was able to make a phone call and alleged he had been beaten. “I have a terrible pain in my head, I have been locked in a room by myself,” he said. “The situation is very bad.”
The protesters say they were also teargassed.
Another detainee who participated in the action but did not have a ticket for Thursday’s flight told the Guardian by phone in the early hours that the situation was getting worse. He sent a message at 3.33am saying: “They brought special forces for us, they used [teargas], they took us by force inside rooms, they took the ones who have tickets by force. We are in pain, our eyes and bodies are burning.”
A spokesperson for the organisation Captain Support, which supports migrants on the move including people crossing the Channel in small boats, said they were in contact with protesting detainees. “We are horrified by the violence used against [the protesters] to enact the government’s ‘one in, one out’ plan,” they said.
Libby Kane of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI) said: “This cruel UK-France scheme ultimately amounts to state-sanctioned human trafficking. We stand in complete solidarity with them and their demands.”
The Home Office declined to comment.
