'You risk being deported’: Home Office adverts shown to migrants in France in bid to stop them crossing the Channel
These are the adverts the Home Office is pushing to migrants in France - warning they could be deported.
Listen to this article
LBC has seen the digital posters and videos being pumped out to people in a bid to stop them making the dangerous Channel crossing.
They feature warnings both in English and French, saying they risk being sent back under the new ‘one in, one out’ deal signed earlier this summer.
Adverts are being pumped out on social media sites like TikTok, which small boat smugglers use to lure in clients, alongside real-life posters.
Read more: Man and woman charged after viral video shows girl, 12, 'brandishing knife and axe'
And they’ll be slapped on big billboards too in the coming weeks.
The first adverts went online earlier this week, and are expected to reach thousands of people most at risk of making the perilous journey.
The adverts, seen exclusively by LBC, feature bright yellow text warning attempted crossers: “There is a new UK-France treaty.
“If you arrive in the UK by small boat illegally, you now risk being deported and will not be eligible to re-enter the UK nor remain in France without the legal right to do so."
Migrants have already been detained under the scheme, and the first deportations are due to take place in the coming weeks.
It’s expected that as many as 50 a week could be returned as part of the pilot, but if successful, ministers hope to be able to ramp it up.
However, for every migrant that is sent back to France, the UK has agreed to take in one genuine asylum-seeker from there.
More than 50,000 people have made the dangerous journey since Labour came to power - and they’re on track for a possible record-breaking 2025.
But ministers have pointed to drops in the numbers of crossings in August, saying it’s proof their plan to smash the gangs is working.
Yvette Cooper told LBC’s Nick Ferrari earlier this week that migrants may be housed in industrial sites like warehouses in future, as part of plans to close asylum hotels.
Ministers succeeded in winning a court appeal to keep migrants at the Bell Hotel in Epping last week - after a judge had initially declared they must be removed after a technical issue about planning permissions.
They have promised to shut them all by the end of the parliament, but Sir Keir Starmer has vowed to bring that date forward if possible.
