Children detained under ‘one-in-one-out’ scheme lays bare the UK scheme’s brutal reality

Guest post by Sophie Cartwright. Sophie is the Senior Policy Officer at the Jesuit Refugee Service UK (JRS UK) and a Research Associate at the Centre for Criminology. Her research focuses on immigration detention and asylum. 

In August 2025, the UK and France began trading people seeking asylum under the ‘one-in-one-out’ scheme. Many people detained are survivors of torture and trafficking so are at very high risk of severe re-trauma from detention. Self-harm is high among them. Under the scheme, the UK detains people arriving by ‘small boat’ to seek asylum and returns them to France without even examining their claim. For each person returned, another asylum seeker is permitted to come from France to the UK to have their asylum claim assessed here. One person’s access to asylum is thus made dependent on someone else being denied it.

Despite being officially excluded from the scheme, children are routinely being detained for removal to France after being wrongly designated as ‘adults’ by the Home Office. In some cases, children have subsequently been removed. Details of the practice have been highlighted in a recent briefing from the Jesuit Refugee Service UK (JRS UK) and Humans for Rights Network (HFRN) - Age disputed children detained under the ‘one-in-one-out’ scheme. JRS UK’s detention outreach team supports people detained on the scheme in Heathrow Immigration Removal Centre, including affected children. The detention and then the removal of children is harming them and putting them in danger.

Drawing on data from NGOs across different UK detention centres, JRS UK and HFRN identified 141 age disputed young people detained under the scheme in the 10 months since it began up until 13 May 2026. Of these, at least 18 were removed to France. A further 64 young people were subsequently recognised as children by local authorities, or placed in local authority care pending further inquiries about their age – a glaring indictment of the Home Office’s screening processes. Another 13 were released into adult asylum accommodation, either due to successful bail applications or due to being spontaneously dropped from the scheme. Thirty-six young people were engaged in ongoing legal challenges and age disputes in relation to their ages, with many of these children still detained. The whereabouts of at least 10 was unknown.

The problem continues to grow. By 24 June 2026, HFRN had identified a total of 174 age disputed young people detained under the scheme, 25 of whom had been removed to France, and 77 had been identified as children by the local authority, or were in their care pending further inquiries.

As these figures represent only those who have come to NGOs’ attention, the actual number of children detained - and the number of those removed - is likely to be higher. The most vulnerable children disproportionately struggle to access support in detention. Accessing support requires proactivity, especially since, in detention, movements and communications are restricted. Additionally, many people detained contact JRS UK after word of mouth referrals, but as children wrongly detained are often afraid to mix with detained adults, they are less likely to know what support is available. They are therefore likely to go unnoticed.

Systemic misidentification of children’s ages

Several factors contribute to the misidentification of children and their wrongful detention, and sometimes removal – both of which are extremely harmful, exposing them to renewed risk of danger. Firstly, the initial screening process is deeply flawed, preventing children from disclosing their age and from fully understanding what is happening. The age of someone arriving on a ‘small boat’ is recorded during initial screening processes, just after arrival. The young people concerned are typically exhausted, hungry, and extremely disoriented. Sometimes, screening interviews are conducted by phone, so the interviewer recording the age may not even see the young person. Interpretation can be lacking or poor. An institutional lack of understanding of non-Gregorian calendars also adds to confusion. We are aware of a child who was unable to convert his date of birth from the Eritrean calendar, and the date of birth that was then recorded for him wrongly placed him over the age of 18.

These issues are compounded by a culture of disbelief among those tasked with these cursory initial assessments in the docks. The onus is always on the young person to prove their age. In detention, we have supported children who explain they told the Home Office their actual age, but were recorded as aged over 18 on Home Office documents. Children are often confused about this and do not understand what has happened or why.

Smuggler control of young people also plays a role. Many young people we have encountered on the scheme explain that they initially told the Home Office they were adults (even though this was not true) on the advice of smugglers. HFRN have documented clear coercion by smugglers, including children being told not to disclose their true age because doing so could, so they are told, lead to removal from the UK, or placement in children’s services with restricted freedom of movement. As noted in our report, we are concerned this coercion may be linked to ongoing exploitation after arrival, including forced labour and the recovery of crossing debts. The Home Office’s processes do not take this into account when recording age.

Despite the clear and increasing pattern of children being detained, we have seen no material change in Home Office practice to prevent recurrence.  

Once in detention, children face huge barriers to challenging their designation as ‘adult’. To do so, they need to have their age re-assessed. This is typically by a local authority – the legal body responsible for age assessments and children’s care. We have observed that if a young person tells a Home Office official they are a child and the official happens not to believe them, they often don’t refer them to the local authority, despite their obligation to do so. Where young people are referred to local authorities, this is typically after the intervention of NGOs or lawyers. But as JRS research has recently shown, it is also extremely difficult to access adequate legal advice while in detention.

Even if a young person is referred to the local authority, this doesn’t necessarily protect them. They can remain in detention for a long time waiting for a full age assessment, without the removal action against them being paused. Where a young person says they are over 18 at initial screening, this can be counted against them later, despite the many reasons why children initially claim to be adults. If the Home Office has wrongly recorded someone as an adult at initial screening, despite being told otherwise, this can also be counted against the young person later.

Furthermore, age assessments are initially conducted in detention. Being detained makes it harder to gather evidence needed – such as documents from relatives – because there are multiple communication barriers, such as limited phone credit and internet access. Thus, we are very concerned that local authorities are also sometimes assessing children to be adults.

Impact on children

The impact of detention and fear of removal on these children is crushing. The children we support almost invariably suffer from a serious decline in mental health over their time in detention, becoming withdrawn and self-isolating. We have supported children who have resorted to self-harm and expressed suicidal ideation. Access to healthcare in detention is also so abysmal that these children often cannot access care if they badly need it.

Once removed to France, they face further danger from exploitative actors and police brutality, and from the prospect of being further removed to the situation they originally fled. It has proven difficult to keep in touch with young people after they have been forcibly removed to France. This itself raises serious concerns that they may have fallen under the radar and be vulnerable to trafficking, exploitation, and abuse. Many of those we have maintained contact with are destitute and sleeping rough. 

End of ‘one in one out’?

Since its commencement, the scheme has been wrought with systematic failures in screening and safeguarding, attested by both JRS UK and other organisations supporting people on the scheme, including Medical Justice. 

The current scheme is a pilot. It was originally due to end in June but has been extended until October despite these egregious safeguarding failings. Recent media reports have cited French government sources saying that the scheme will end after October. If so, this will be long overdue, and too late for many of the children whose lives have been crushed by the policy. But in a context where our government remains enthusiastic about removal hubs and outsourcing asylum, and the EU has set up mechanisms for return hubs, more schemes that operate through rapid detention and removal look likely to remain part of the UK’s asylum system. And as the government plans to assess age at the border with AI methods – which have been noted by the civil servants in charge of the plans as inaccurate and containing racial bias – the misidentification of children in the context of brutal border control could become even more widespread.

The frequent and increasing detention of children on one-in-one-out is indicative of a system that prioritises removal and unevidenced ‘deterrence’-based policies over the human beings at its centre. It is a glaring indictment of a politics of performative cruelty that is deeply destructive to human flourishing, and incompatible with even the most basic procedural justice or safeguarding. An entirely different approach is needed.

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