The Home Office has launched an initiative to deport migrants who cross the Channel from France to the UK in small boats, the Guardian has learned. The initiative, known as Operation Sillath, is thought to be in response to rising numbers of people arriving in boats from France. Earlier this month a record 145 people were picked up after crossing the Channel on 8 May as they headed for the Kent coast. The previous daily record was 102 in February 2020. There were 297 boat crossings by migrants in 2018, 1,890 last year and at least 1,040 so far this year. Under current legislation known as the Dublin convention one EU country can send an asylum seeker back to another if there is evidence that they were fingerprinted, claimed asylum or spent time in the first EU country before arriving in the second. However, human rights lawyers and campaigners say that they have gathered evidence that under Operation Sillath migrants are already being returned swiftly to France before their asylum claims have been properly considered, and even if there is no evidence of these things happening in France, in breach of the convention. Lily Parrott, a lawyer at Duncan Lewis solicitors, who is working on a legal challenge about Operation Sillath and the return of asylum seekers to France who arrive in small boats, said: “We are increasingly concerned about a trend that we have seen where the Home Office seeks to remove people from the UK to France after they arrived to the UK by boat. We feel that this is being done illegally and on the basis of a conflation between the Dublin convention and a UK-France treaty about border management. “This would be an egregious breach of European law that allowed many asylum-seekers to be wrongly removed from the UK.” Earlier this month the home secretary, Priti Patel, urged her French counterparts to back a new crackdown to enable the UK to return Channel migrants to France even if they have been found in British waters. A Home Office freedom of information response in March 2020 seen by the Guardian stated that last year (2019) 21 people were removed to France under the disputed clause of the Dublin convention. A further freedom of information response from the Home Office refers to Operation Sillath but declines to provide information about the operation on the basis that it would be too costly. An immigration detention centre visitor group has also raised concerns about the practice of returning people to France. The organisation sends visitors to people in the detention centres where some of the migrants have been detained. They expressed concern about “an alarming trend” to attempt to remove asylum seekers from the UK to France even though their fingerprints had not been found in the European-wide database known as Eurodac and there was no clear evidence they spent any significant amount of time in France or claimed asylum there. They said that out of nine such cases they worked with recently at least two were possible victims of trafficking and three were possible victims of torture. One was removed to France by the Home Office where he was subjected to torture and abuse by migrant smugglers. Clare Moseley, founder of the charity Care4Calais, said that people crossing on boats had fled some of the most dangerous countries in the world. “When they turn to us for help we simply must treat them fairly and properly. I know a man who was sent back to France in error and then was finally and correctly given UK asylum thanks to the excellent work of his lawyers. Being aware of his suffering I find it deeply shocking to think a different outcome was possible and may well have happened to others in the same position.” A Home Office spokesperson said: “No one should be making these dangerous and illegally-facilitated crossings from France to the UK. France is a safe country and no one should be getting on these boats and putting themselves in danger. We are working closely with the French government to tackle this dangerous and illegal activity, including returning over 155 migrants back to European countries.” The French embassy has been approached for comment.