At the end of last year, two men fled Iran. Aso and Baran* were strangers at the time. The way their stories would cross, then diverge, reveals the cruel arbitrariness of the UK asylum system in general, and the government’s controversial one in, one out scheme in particular.
Before he left Iran, Aso, 28, had converted from Islam to Christianity, putting his life in imminent danger. “I had to keep my conversion to Christianity a secret,” he says. “I knew if I was caught, I risked being executed by the Iranian regime … one of my relatives, who I trusted, paid smugglers to get me out last November.”
A few weeks later, at the end of December, Baran fled too. The 33-year-old had been politically active against the Iranian government, he says, and “feared being punished by the ministry of intelligence. I had previously been targeted by the Iranian authorities, shot at with rubber bullets and hit on the back of my head. My house was raided by intelligence officers one day when I wasn’t at home. They confiscated my ID. Relatives contacted me and warned me not to return home. They took me to another village and, from there – with the help of these relatives, who paid smugglers – I was taken out of Iran and crossed the border to Turkey.” A rubber bullet remains lodged in his genitals.
The men made their way separately to northern France. There, their paths converged – but they were still yet to meet.
In January this year, Aso and Baran boarded the same small boat, bound for the UK. Aso says the crossing was “terrifying”. His legs had been hit with a pipe by the smugglers the night before, and he spent eight excruciating hours in the dinghy on his knees. “There was no room to sit, and the waves were crashing into us. It is the most frightening thing in the world.”
On arrival, they were taken to a detention centre, where they finally met. Aso says he could immediately see that Baran “was a good and kind person, despite the difficult conditions in the detention centre – being locked in our cells for up to 12 hours a day, not knowing what was going to happen to us and feeling terrified of being returned to France. Despite all the stress, Baran was very calm and I always felt comfortable with him.”
Their fears about being sent back to France were well founded. The UK government’s one in, one out scheme was announced last July by then prime minister Sir Keir Starmer and France’s president, Emmanuel Macron. It is being piloted until 1 October, and aims to deter people like Aso and Baran from crossing the Channel in small boats to seek sanctuary in the UK. Since it began, more than a thousand asylum seekers have been selected by the Home Office, apparently at random, to be returned to France.
The idea is that one person who arrives here in a small boat is forcibly returned to France in exchange for another who is brought legally to the UK from France. Those who are brought to the UK are distinguished by the fact they have not previously tried to cross the Channel in a small boat. The aim of the scheme is to make the UK so unappealing that refugees choose somewhere else – anywhere else – to seek safety. In effect, people like Aso and Baran, who want to settle in the UK, are used as reluctant human shields to protect our border from others in the same predicament as them.
Today, Baran is living on the outskirts of Lille, sleeping under a tree in the park. I meet him in the centre of the city, and he appears to have no belongings beyond the frayed jeans, battered trainers and ancient fleece he is wearing, and a package wrapped in black plastic, holding his Home Office documents. His curly hair is prematurely streaked with grey, and the smell of wood smoke hangs around him, from his time spent huddled over an open fire.
In January, when Baran first realised he was at risk of being returned to France, he begged the Home Office not to deport him. His Home Office detention notes, shared with the Guardian, refer to his “food and fluid refusal” – a hunger strike – and it is recorded that he told officials: “I would rather die than return to France.”
They ignored him. He was returned to Paris in the middle of February.
“When I was returned to France, I was in so much pain from the bullet lodged in my genitals that I travelled to the local hospital to see if they could treat me,” he says. The smugglers knew the location of the shelter where he was being housed and found him there. “Because I was sent back to France, rather than staying in the UK, my family did not pay the smugglers, so they came after me to catch me and punish me, because they didn’t get their money.
“After they caught me, they took me to the Jungle in Dunkirk [an informal refugee encampment, known for its poor conditions], beat me with sticks and with their hands, and threatened me with guns. I was a slave for the smugglers. They forced me to wash dishes and clothes for eight to 10 hours every day, without breaks … even to go to the toilet. When I did not follow their instructions, they hit me in the mouth and used a log to hit me in the leg.”
Many of those who have been returned to France, after failing to access immigration lawyers who could successfully fight their case, have boarded the flight from Stansted to Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport in a quietly hopeless state. But there have also been protests against these forced removals inside detention centres, and multiple suicide attempts.
In March, a month after Baran was sent back to France, Aso was sent back there too.
He says he was accompanied by Home Office guards on the flight out of the UK, which he found frightening. “It really is a terrible feeling. Two officers hold you and sit right next to you on the plane, treating you as if you’ve committed a major crime, as if you had killed someone or you are a dangerous person. My mental health was completely shattered.”
On arrival, Aso was placed in an immigration camp in Paris, “that was incredibly cold, with inhumane conditions and inadequate food”.
He sent me a message: “Please help me. I don’t know what to do here. We cannot have a shower because the water is ice cold. We are completely lost and confused. I am so scared. Please let me be safe. I don’t want to die. I want to live. I am deeply heartbroken. It has been four months since I last had any news of my mother and my country is now torn by war. If I am sent back to Iran, I will be executed, because I converted to Christianity.”
He was later evicted from the shelter – returnees are generally only accommodated there for a few days – and left homeless. “I found no support in Paris, and went back to the Jungle in Dunkirk, living in the forest there with a couple of other people I knew.” On 28 March, Aso sent me a WhatsApp message from the Jungle: “l am terrified here. These smugglers are heartless. They will hurt me wherever they find me.”
While Aso was searching for a safe place to stay in France, Baran was already back in the UK. At the beginning of March, he travelled back to Britain. A lorry brought him to Dover, and he was found hiding in it before being arrested and returned to a UK detention centre for the second time.
Baran is far from the only refugee who has been deported under the one in, one out scheme, then risked their life to return.
The Guardian has tracked more than 30 people who have been forcibly returned to France after arriving in the UK on a small boat. All say they have received minimal support in France and, at times, outright hostility. Some have crossed borders to Italy, Germany, Sweden, Spain and the Netherlands. While critics and Home Office officials call this “asylum shopping”, the asylum seekers see it very differently. They say all they are looking for is a place they can live safely without being thrown out, detained or forcibly returned either to their home country or another country they passed through on their journey.
Many, like Baran, have returned to the UK after being deported, finding conditions in France too difficult, particularly due to threats from the people smugglers who transported them across the Channel the first time.
Asylum seekers themselves estimate that approximately 200 of those who have been deported have returned to the UK – some, like Baran, by lorry, a route that smugglers have been using increasingly since the start of the scheme.
Previously, all asylum seekers crossing the Channel declared themselves to the Home Office on arrival in the UK, hopeful that they might be granted asylum and the chance to build a new and legal life. But now some are living under the radar, a development that critics claim actually reduces control of UK borders. The Home Office accepts that about 50 returnees have been detained a second time after returning to the UK. The Guardian has been given names, ages and nationalities of more than 30 returnees from 10 different countries, including Somalia, Georgia, Afghanistan and Syria, some of whom are living under the radar.
Every time I called Baran at the detention centre he was anxiously awaiting news about his case. “Many other asylum seekers have been released into the UK community or sent to France by plane,” he said. “But I am being locked up for many months here with no update about my case. Do you know what will happen to me?”
Aso was still struggling in France. On 3 May, I received another message from him. “Even though I am only 28, I feel like a 60-year-old man because of all the stress, grief and depression I’ve experienced. I am constantly living in fear of falling back into the hands of the smugglers or being deported to Iran by France.
“Unfortunately, the Home Office didn’t listen to us when we said France wasn’t safe. I’m aware that many asylum seekers in France burn off their fingerprints to avoid being sent back to countries like Bulgaria. A question: if you burn your fingerprints, will your fingerprints disappear?”
By 16 May, he was even more frantic. “I don’t want to hide it from you,” he wrote. “I can’t stay in France any more. Either I will return to Iran and let them execute me or I will go back to the UK. I have no choice. My life is ruined here. I have no money, no clothes and there is absolutely no one to help me. Living here is like dying every single day. It has been 50 days since I returned. I’m losing my mind. Of course I am under threat in the Jungle. I am so stressed, I don’t know what to do. I’m dying here every single day.”
In the middle of June, Aso returned to the UK in a lorry, just as his friend Baran had three months before. He was immediately detained too. “If France were safe and my life were not in danger, I would never have risked returning to the UK,” he told me. “I do not feel safe anywhere else. The United Kingdom is the only place where I am protected from the Iranian regime and criminal smuggler networks.”
Baran ended up being detained for more than four months on his return to the UK, longer than the usual timeframe for people detained under the one in, one out scheme. While in detention, he was told he needed surgery to remove the rubber bullet from his genitals. The Home Office declined to arrange it and said the surgery could be performed in France.
In July, France finally accepted the readmission request that had initially been made for him in March. Although Baran’s ability to speak and write English is very limited, he drafted a note to the Home Office in clear script just before his second removal to France, stating: “I can’t go back to France because over there is not safe for me. Don’t let them to send me back.” Since being returned there, he has been unable to access any health, housing or welfare services.
Aso’s life took a different path. While in detention in the UK, not knowing whether he would be returned to France for a second time, he became increasingly distressed. But a friend in Swansea offered to support and accommodate him, and he was overjoyed to be granted bail. For the first time since I got to know him, his messages became more positive.
“I feel like I’m getting better. I’m feeling safe,” he said in a message on 12 August. “It’s very hot here. I’ve decided to hit the beach for a dip to cool off.”
But Aso is desperately concerned about his friend. “I really don’t know why they sent Baran back to France for the second time but have allowed me to stay in the UK. It is honestly such a sad situation for Baran.” The two men have been in contact on WhatsApp, but Baran sometimes struggles to charge his phone, so many of Aso’s calls go unanswered.
The images of people in orange lifejackets arriving in the UK on overcrowded dinghies have been used by Reform UK and other right-wing political parties and commentators to claim the country is being overrun. In fact, the UK takes only a tenth or less of asylum seekers arriving in Europe and ranks 15th in Europe per head of population for asylum claims.
One in, one out was supposed to act as a deterrent, but it is not clear whether it has succeeded. The number of asylum seekers who have crossed the Channel so far in 2026 is down 40% on the same period last year, but that is in the context of asylum seeker arrivals to Europe being down significantly overall. Windy weather has also made crossings more difficult, and some people are travelling to the UK from France in lorries, uncounted in the immigration statistics. The Home Office has been reticent about what, if anything, will replace one in, one out when the pilot scheme finishes.
In Lille, Baran remains downcast. I offer to take him to the supermarket so he can choose a few essentials. He is too dejected to even look at the shelves. His chin sinks towards his chest and he says food no longer interests him. Under pressure from me to choose something, he puts a single apple, two bananas, a packet of nuts and a box of Ritz crackers in the shopping basket.
“I don’t have any friends in France or any plan,” he says. “A few guys who live near the park I’m sleeping in help me with food and sometimes let me have a shower at their place. The smugglers caught me before and I am frightened all the time that they will catch me again. My only hope is to find a way to return to the UK. But I don’t know how.”
Baran last made contact with the Guardian just before midnight on 24 August. His current whereabouts and condition are unknown.
