Reform UK plan to return asylum seekers using navy ‘dangerous in practice’

A plan put forward by Britain’s right-wing Reform UK party to deploy the navy to intercept and return asylum seekers arriving by boat has triggered a dispute with France.

Reform leader Nigel Farage, who is under political pressure at home over a series of financial scandals and faces a by-election in just more than a week, characterised the mission dubbed “Operation Fortress” not as pushbacks but as “rescue and return”. He argued that, per its humanitarian nature, the measure would not breach international law, as stated by the French Ministry of the Interior.

Pointing to the arrival of thousands of migrants in Spain’s North African enclave of Ceuta, Farage on Monday pledged, if elected, to stop a similar “invasion” by launching the largest military operation in the English Channel since World War II. He said the measure would ensure that people are “immediately returned to their point of departure”.

Responding to France, Reform said: “We will always stand up for British interests and protect our people, whether [President] Emmanuel Macron likes it or not.”

Zia Yusuf, Reform UK’s spokesperson for home affairs, claimed France “sent us 200,000 illegal migrants, including murderers and terrorists”, and that marines would return them anyway to the French coast.

But groups and analysts say the proposal is unrealistic and could lead to a diplomatic dispute.

The Centre for Military Justice said international maritime laws do not “permit a State’s armed forces to go into the territorial waters of another state to seize and return people to that state. Indeed, in most cases, to do so may well amount to a flagrant breach of these conventions.”

Unilateral action on Britain’s part “would have a major diplomatic effect, prompting France to suspend existing cooperation, such as intelligence sharing and beach patrols in Northern France”, Mihnea Cuibus, senior researcher at the University of Oxford’s Migration Observatory, told Al Jazeera. “It is also possible that France would attempt to repel British ships in the Channel to prevent further returns.”