PARIS: Britain and France have agreed a new three-year deal to stop undocumented migrants making the risky journey across the English Channel, according to a French interior ministry roadmap seen by AFP Wednesday. Under the deal, France pledged to increase law enforcement on the coast by more than half to fight irregular migration to Britain &mdash; reaching 1,400 officers by 2029. Britain will meanwhile provide up to 766 million euros ($897 million) in funding &mdash; though nearly a quarter of that will have strings attached and be paid only if the French measures work. The cross-Channel neighbors have been wrangling for months over the renewal of the Sandhurst treaty, which sets out the UK&#39;s financial contribution to French efforts to stop migrants attempting the perilous sea crossing to Britain. The UK has long accused France of doing too little to prevent would-be asylum seekers &mdash; a hot-button issue in British politics &mdash; from setting off from French shores, with smugglers and migrants taking ever-greater risks to avoid detection. As a result, London insisted it would only renew the Sandhurst treaty &mdash; first signed in 2018, extended in 2023 and set to expire this year &mdash; if it could impose conditions on how British taxpayers&#39; money is used by the French government. According to the French ministry roadmap, if the new measures do not deliver &quot;sufficient results, based on a joint annual assessment, the funding will be redirected to new actions.&quot; Even if the conditional portion is not paid, however, the UK&#39;s core contribution of 580 million euros still represents a 40-million-euro hike on what it paid under the last treaty. French interior minister Laurent Nunez and his UK counterpart Shabana Mahmood are set to lay out further details of the plan on Thursday while on a visit to a building site of an accommodation center for people set to be deported from France at Loon-Plage, near Dunkirk. 29 dead at sea&nbsp;The deal&#39;s renewal comes at a crunch time for UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who faces political pressure from the right to curb immigration. Many believe Starmer&#39;s political survival relies on his Labor party defying predictions of a chastening set of defeats in May&#39;s local elections, caught between a surging Green party to the left and hard-right anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage&#39;s Reform UK. Besides the step-up in law enforcement on the beaches, France is looking to deploy drones, helicopters and digital resources to &quot;better prevent attempted crossings&quot; and reduce the number of departures, particularly of &quot;taxi boats,&quot; the roadmap said. &quot;A large share of the resources planned under this partnership will be concentrated from the start of the summer and throughout the summer period,&quot; traditionally the peak period for small boat crossings, the document says. By the terms of the international law of the sea, once a boat has set off from shore, the authorities can only intervene to save people from drowning. According to official figures from the British authorities, 41,472 people reached the UK irregularly in small boats in 2025, the second-highest figure since large-scale crossings were first detected in 2018. At least 29 migrants died at sea in the Channel in 2025, according to an AFP tally based on official French and British sources. The French side has pointed to the fact that since the beginning of 2026, arrivals to the United Kingdom have halved compared with the same period last year.&nbsp; Around 480 smugglers have also been arrested in 2025, according to the French interior ministry.

Europe

Under the deal, France pledges to increase law enforcement on the coast by more than half to fight irregular migration to Britain — reaching 1,400 officers by 2029; Britain will meanwhile provide up to $897 million in funding — though nearly a quarter of that will have strings attached and be paid only if the French measures work.

UK, France agree three-year deal to stop migrant crossings

LONDON: The UK government said Wednesday it had forcibly deported an Ethiopian migrant and convicted sex offender, giving him &pound;500 ($661) to leave, as it came under fire on multiple fronts over immigration. The interior ministry said Hadush Kebatu was back in Ethiopia early Wednesday after an embarrassing blunder when he was released from a UK prison by mistake last week. &quot;It is right that he has been removed. He was forcibly deported,&quot; junior minister Alex Norris told parliament. But he acknowledged the man, who was accompanied by a five-strong team of escorts on the plane late Tuesday, had kicked up a fuss and made &quot;very real threats to disrupt the flight.&quot; So &quot;an operational decision was taken to provide a &pound;500 payment&quot; to Kebatu, 38, who had demanded &pound;1,500 to leave under a government migrant return scheme. &quot;The alternative was slower, more expensive for the taxpayer, and would have included detention, a new flight, and no doubt subsequent legal claims,&quot; Norris said. The interior ministry said Kebatu had &quot;no right to return&quot; to the UK, after he was re-arrested in a London park on Sunday following a nearly 48-hour police manhunt. Kebatu had served the first month of a one-year sentence for sexually assaulting a teenage girl and a woman when he was accidentally released last week. His high-profile case earlier this year in Epping, northeast of London, sparked multiple demonstrations targeting hotels where asylum seekers were believed to be housed. Justice minister David Lammy on Monday announced an independent investigation into Kebatu&#39;s accidental release, revealing that such mistakes had risen in recent years. A series of immigration-related issues in the past days has piled even more pressure on beleaguered Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his Labour government. London police are investigating after a man was killed and two people injured, including a 14-year-old boy, in a daylight stabbing on Monday in Uxbridge, a town west of London. UK media reported a man under arrest for the attack was an Afghan national, while the interior ministry confirmed only that he was a foreigner legally residing in Britain since 2022. The Home Office said the suspect entered Britain in a truck in 2020 and was granted asylum in 2022. It said he was not living in a hotel or other accommodation provided by the authorities, as falsely claimed on social media. Billions squanderedTough questions were also raised in parliament Wednesday about plans for the government to use two former army barracks to house asylum seekers as it seeks to end its use of hotels to accommodate migrants. Starmer has said he wants to see asylum seeker hotels closed &quot;as quickly as possible,&quot; and his Labour government has committed to ending the use of hotels for the purpose by 2029. The Cameron Barracks in Inverness, northeastern Scotland, and the Crowborough army camp in southeastern England have been earmarked to house around 900 asylum seekers in total by the end of the year. Earlier this week, a parliamentary report found the Home Office, across different governments, had &quot;squandered billions&quot; on the flawed asylum housing system. The use of former military camps for asylum housing has been contentious in the past. The previous Conservative government was sued by asylum seekers housed in a former army camp, which courts determined had failed to meet minimum standards.

United Kingdom

The interior ministry says Hadush Kebatu was back in Ethiopia early Wednesday after an embarrassing blunder when he was released from a UK prison by mistake last week.

Articles tagged with "UK immigration laws"

UK, France agree three-year deal to stop migrant crossings

Under-fire UK govt deports migrant sex offender with £500