UN backs 'return hubs' in boost to Labour plans to deport failed asylum seekers
19 April 2025, 07:50
The United Nations has thrown its support behind Labour’s so-called “return hubs” in a boost to Government plans to deport failed asylum seekers.
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Sir Keir Starmer’s Government has pledged to crack down on people smuggling across the Channel and has proposed the use of “return hubs” to send those who have their asylum claims rejected overseas.
Last month, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper met the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, to discuss sending people to return hubs in a paying third country, the Times reports.
The UNHCR has set out how returns hubs could work while meeting its legal standards in a document published this week.
This intervention could mark the first step in making the “return hubs” a reality, a Government source said.
According to the UNHCR, “return hubs” could “appropriately be explored” and that it could play a role in supporting countries to use them as long as it does not conflict with its mandate to protect refugees.
But the agency insisted human rights standards must be “reliably met” at any hubs.
The country hosting the return hub would need to grant temporary legal status for migrants and the sending country would need to support it to make sure there are “adequate accommodation and reception arrangements”, the refugee agency said.
Recently, the EU Commission proposed using “return hubs” to allow the deportation of migrants, while Italy has been sending people in detention centres in Albania for some time.
At a summit last month, Sir Keir said the UK was working “very closely” with Italian ministers to consider ways to process migrants with asylum claims in a third country.
He told reporters anything that will be looked at has got to be “consistent with international law” and “cost effective”.
A total of 9,099 migrants have crossed the English Channel so far this year.
A migrant died while trying to make the crossing on Friday, the RNLI confirmed.
More than 700 migrants crossed on Tuesday, in the highest number of arrivals on a single day this year.
More arrivals have been recorded in January to April 2025 than in the equivalent four-month period in any year since data on Channel crossings began in 2018.
