Home Office plan to deport asylum seekers to Syria sparks new row - The i Paper

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A UK plan to step up deportations of migrants back to Syria risks sparking a new conflict, Sir Keir Starmer has been warned as he pressed the country’s controversial leader on a new programme of returns.

The Prime Minister held talks in Downing Street with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former al-Qaeda-linked jihadist regarded by the West as a reformed figure, in which he called for them to work closer together “on returns, on border security and on tackling people smuggling networks” of people now that the civil war is over.

However, a senior humanitarian and ex-diplomat told The i Paper that sending thousands of people back to the country risked sparking a new conflict due to sectarian violence and dire humanitarian and economic conditions.

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Charlotte Slente, secretary general of the Danish Refugee Council, said: “Basically, we are returning people to a situation that will not be safe.

“The risk of renewed conflict just due to the very devastating situation on the ground will increase dramatically.”

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has made increasing the removal – voluntary and forced – of asylum seekers to Syria an early priority in delivering the hard-line Denmark-style migration reforms she announced last year as Labour attempts to see off the threat of Reform.

Mahmood announced in November that she was exploring forced returns of asylum seekers to countries previously deemed unsafe, for example, due to war, like Syria, as she announced plans for sweeping, Denmark-style asylum reforms.

She is ploughing ahead with the plans despite the UK Government in January highlighting “deeply concerning” violence, mass displacement of civilians and a deteriorating humanitarian situation in Syria.

Syria’s civil war ended in December 2024 when al-Sharaa ousted the hated dictator Bashar al-Assad. Last week, the UK Government said that as of May 2025, half a million Syrian refugees, mainly from Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq, had returned to Syria.

The assessment added that it “was unable to find any reports of the new Syrian authorities subjecting returnees to mistreatment, arrest or detention.”

This week, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz also said 80 per cent of Syrians in Germany should return to their homeland now that the civil war is over.

But Slente warned that the country faced multiple deep problems as she piled fresh pressure on Mahmood over her migration policy, amid a Labour revolt over plans to make it harder for legal immigrants to settle in the UK.

She recounted a recent visit to the formerly thriving Jobar neighbourhood of Damascus with a Syrian woman who had recently returned from Turkey.

Charlotte Slente speaks to a Syrian refugee who was displaced to Turkey for eight years and recently returned to her old neighbourhood and found it unrecognisable (Photo: Omar Haj Kadour)

It was now like “a ghost town – no electricity, no water, the skeletons of the houses, nothing inside, all you know, iron, wood, tiles, doors, windows, everything ripped away.”

‘There was nothing to return to’

“That lady was not able to recognise her street,” Slente said. She had returned with her family from Turkey, where they had spent the last eight years, and wanted to come back and help reconstruct their country.

“But she and many others regretted having returned because basically, there was nothing to return to.”

Slente said this picture of destroyed infrastructure was repeated in cities such as Homs, Hama and Aleppo, and that 1.3 million homes have been destroyed.

Alongside this, there is a “major” problem of unexploded bombs and landmines, revealing she met a mother in Damascus whose child “was killed because he played with an unexploded ordnance thinking it was a toy”.

“People [are] returning with no jobs, with no houses, with no vision about how they can create a stable future, basically regretting having returned, not recognising the places they come back to, not feeling secure,” Slente said.

“Because their children cannot go out at night, they do not recognise their own streets, they do not dare send their children to schools if they are open, because it’s risky.

“It’s also risky for women to come back, or many do not feel safe at all returning. So, yes, we might not have a conflict with war on the street, but that doesn’t mean that for people, there’s an assessment that it’s always safe to return.

“So I think we need in Europe a little bit more patience and a more sequenced process here, very much with emphasis on the voluntary approach to return.”

Oxford University’s Migration Observatory has suggested thousands of Syrians could theoretically be sent back, with around 7,900 waiting for an initial decision on an asylum application (10 per cent of the total) and 6,600 receiving asylum support while their claim is pending (6 per cent), of which 1,900 are in hotels (5 per cent), as of January.

When contacted for comment, the Home Office indicated the read-out from Starmer’s meeting with the Syrian President, which included the wording: “They both affirmed the importance of avoiding further escalation and restoring stability in the region.”

Extension to France Channel policing deal

It came as Mahmood announced a two-month extension to the UK’s current deal with France to stop Channel crossings at a cost of €19m (£16.6m) to Britain.

The extension was announced as negotiations on replacing the current £475m agreement, negotiated by Conservative ex-prime minister Rishi Sunak, stalled as Mahmood pushes for a payment-by-results model, a significant increase in the number of French officers on beaches and innovative new disruption techniques to be included in the successor scheme.

A Home Office spokesman said she was “driving a hard bargain to deliver the best deal for the British people to prevent illegal migrants getting to Britain”.

The current deal has put 700 French law enforcement, military and police officers on the ground on the coast – patrolling beaches, gathering intelligence, using drones and buggies to stop migrants boarding small boats for crossings to the UK.

It has prevented 42,000 migrants from getting on boats to cross the Channel since the election.