UK’s ‘one in, one out’ scheme has failed to protect torture survivors, says charity | Immigration and asylum
The Home Office has been accused of failing to protect survivors of trafficking and torture detained under the government’s “one in, one out” programme.
Medical Justice, a charity which sends independent clinicians to immigration detention centres, interviewed 33 detainees awaiting return to France by the Home Office in a new report, the first to assess the welfare of this group of detainees.
The report calls for the ‘one in, one out’ system to be scrapped and for small boat arrivals to have their asylum claims processed in the UK. More than 200 people who have crossed the Channel from France to the UK on small boats since August 2025 have been forcibly returned to France, and a similar number have been brought legally to the UK from France.
According to the association, 18 of the 33 people interviewed presented clinical evidence of torture or trafficking.
“Clinical safeguards in detention fail to protect these people,” the report says, adding that they make the protection system in Home Office detention centers “an exercise in futility” with “near total disregard for identified vulnerabilities”.
“For many people in the UK, detention – not past trauma – has been described as the moment they lost hope. From a clinical perspective, this is dangerous,” the report adds.
Many reported facing severe violence, intimidation and death threats from traffickers and smugglers, border forces, police and organized gangs. They said they had been filmed or photographed by traffickers who threatened to use it to find and kill them if they returned to France.
A man, who had clinical evidence of a history of torture, told a Medical Justice clinician that he had been subjected to restraints involving excessive force and violence during an attempted deportation to France.
“After a few minutes, I felt dizzy, my voice became weak and my strength was limited to my tears. They saw me struggling to breathe and honestly, my eyes were turning white and it was hard to breathe. I said quietly, ‘I can’t breathe,’ and I was like, ‘Oh, my God.’ He was returned to custody and a Medical Justice clinician subsequently documented evidence of his physical and psychological injuries.
A Medical Justice spokesperson said: “What distinguishes the mistreatment of clients detained under this program is the combination of a particularly high proportion of trafficking and torture survivors who are at higher risk of harm in custody, alarming levels of suicide and the fact that almost all have experienced a breakdown in the clinical protection system. We are concerned that the government will want to deport these people no matter what.”
A Home Office spokesperson said: “Protecting the UK border is our top priority. Our historic ‘one in, one out’ program means we can return those who arrive on small boats directly to France – a safe country in which any request for protection can and is considered. The welfare of those detained is of the utmost importance and we are committed to ensuring that detention and removal is carried out with dignity.”
