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PARIS: Humanitarian and activist groups filed an appeal Tuesday in France to block a British-French migration deal that aims to deter record numbers of immigrants crossing the Channel to the United Kingdom.
The agreement features a “one-in, one-out” exchange, in which Britain can detain and return to France migrants arriving by boat whom they deem ineligible for asylum, in exchange for London accepting an equal number of migrants from France after they have received a visa.
It was signed in July and came into force in August, with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government struggling to quell public discontent over immigration levels.
But a group of 17 NGOs appealed against the deal in France’s highest administrative court, the Council of State, arguing it should have been ratified by parliament.
“The implementation decree... is tainted with illegality, as it fails to comply with the procedure prescribed by the constitution,” the groups said in a joint statement.
The groups include Utopia 56, which works with migrants, and medical charity Medecins du Monde (Doctors of the World).
According to their lawyer, Lionel Crusoe, the French constitution requires the agreement to have been ratified by parliament before being signed into law.
Crusoe said he expected to hear from the court by the end of the week on whether they would schedule a hearing.
Under the deal, Britain has so far removed 26 people to France and taken in 18 migrants in return, the British government said last week.
British authorities had hoped the deal would curb record levels of irregular Channel crossings, which have fueled the rise of the hard-right Reform UK party.
The organizations argued that “the number of dangerous and illegal crossings of the Channel has not decreased” following the agreement.
More than 8,400 migrants have entered the UK on dinghies since the deal was implemented, according to an AFP count based on official British data.
Nearly 35,500 such migrants have landed on British shores since the beginning of the year.
At least 27 people have died trying to make the perilous Channel crossing by sea during that same period, according to an AFP tally of official figures.

MILAN: Three carabinieri militarized police officers were killed and another 13 carabinieri and police officers were injured in an explosion allegedly set by three middle-aged siblings who had been fighting eviction from a family farm near the northeastern Italian city of Verona early Tuesday, authorities said.
Two brothers and a sister, identified as Dino, Franco and Maria Luisa Rampini, were detained in connection to the explosion in the town of Castel d’Azzano, 10 kilometers (six miles) southwest Verona, police said.
They were being investigated for premeditated murder, chief prosecutor Raffaele Tito told reporters at the scene.
“While our carabinieri were carrying out a judicial order, they were hit by an intentional explosion of a gas tank,’’ Verona’s carabinieri commander, Col. Claudio Pagano, told Sky TG24. He called it “an absolutely crazy gesture.”
Tito said the eviction had been carefully planned. “The reaction was so violent, that it was hard to predict,” the prosecutor said.
The two-story farmhouse had been filled with gas, and the explosion was set off when authorities opened the door in the predawn hours, regional governor Luca Zaia told Sky TG24.
It was the second time authorities moved to evict the siblings. Another attempt was thwarted last year when the Rampinis threatened to blow the house up, Zaia said.
Maria Luisa Rampini told Corriere della Sera last year that the siblings had been fighting what they perceived to be an unjust foreclosure of the family farm.
“They took away the agricultural company, the land and now the house, probably,” Maria Luisa Rampini said on a video filmed during last year’s attempt at evicting the siblings.
“Today they wanted to carry out the eviction. We are opposing it in every way. We have filled the house with gas to be able to fight,” she said on the video posted Tuesday by the newspaper.
Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni and Defense Minister Guido Crosetto each expressed their condolences for the deaths of the carabinieri, part of a national militarized police force that plays a central law enforcement role in Italy.