The Common Travel Area (CTA) and Asylum

Ali Ahmadi, Catherine Barnard and Fiona Costello clarify what the Common Travel Area is, the way it works, and whether or not it’s used as a route for these searching for asylum.

During the night of 8 June 2026, Hadi Alodid, a Sudanese refugee who had entered Northern Ireland (NI) from the Republic of Ireland, allegedly attacked Stephen Ogilvie in north Belfast, leaving him with life-changing accidents. Within hours, experiences of the suspect’s identification and route into NI had fuelled rioting. As violence unfold throughout Belfast, political attention quickly shifted to the Common Travel Area (CTA) and whether or not it had turn out to be a ‘backdoor’ into the UK.

The CTA is a border arrangement between the UK and the Republic of Ireland that has existed (with transient interruptions) because the institution of the Irish Free State in 1922, when each governments agreed that residents might transfer between the 2 jurisdictions with out restriction. The CTA covers the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. It permits British and Irish nationals to dwell, work, and have entry to public companies in both nation, with out immigration formalities. They should not legally required to hold a passport when crossing the land border between NI and the Republic, although airways and ferry corporations might require photograph ID.

The major piece of laws giving CTA a statutory footing is the Ireland Act 1949 which offers that the Republic of Ireland will not be a ‘foreign country’. Similarly, the British Nationality Act 1981 says {that a} citizen of the Republic of Ireland will not be an ‘alien’. The Immigration Act 1971 additionally recognised the CTA in UK immigration regulation by exempting Irish nationals from routine immigration controls. Following Brexit, this was reaffirmed within the Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Act 2020, which offers that Irish residents don’t require depart to enter or stay within the UK. The association is reciprocated in Irish regulation by way of devices similar to Aliens (Exemption) Order 1999 and the Withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union (Consequential Provisions) Act 2020.

The CTA doesn’t prolong the identical free motion rights to non-citizens. Third-country nationals (people who find themselves neither British nor Irish) should adjust to the immigration guidelines of whichever nation they enter. There is not any basic mutual recognition of visas between the UK and Ireland (with restricted exceptions, similar to a bilateral scheme for Indian and Chinese nationals). Those requiring a visa for one nation will normally want a separate visa for the opposite. However, there are not any routine immigration checks on the Irish border and undocumented migrants are unlikely to be detected besides by way of intelligence-led operations or on-the-spot passport checks by regulation enforcement.

When it involves asylum seekers, CTA administration was smoothed by the 2 nations’ shared membership of the EU. The Dublin III Regulation supplied a mechanism for transferring asylum seekers between the UK and Ireland.. However, in observe, the mechanism resulted in only a few transfers between the 2 nations. According to the Home Office, between 2015 and 2020, solely 50 individuals had been transferred from the UK to Ireland, whereas 55 individuals had been transferred from Ireland to the UK. Post-Brexit, this association now not applies Although the UK and Ireland signed an informal returns agreement in 2020 to duplicate a few of Dublin III’s capabilities, it has been virtually completely non-operational, partly due to legal proceedings in Ireland’s High Court relating to the designation of the UK as a ‘safe third country’ whereas the Rwanda deportation coverage remained in drive. Consequently, just one individual has been returned from the UK to Ireland below the settlement.

Data on what number of asylum seekers arrive by way of the CTA is incomplete. Home Office asylum knowledge exhibits that, within the 12 months ending March 2026, 8% (7,740) of asylum seekers entered the nation through ‘other routes’ which incorporates CTA-related entries. However, there isn’t any breakdown of what number of of those arrivals particularly got here by way of the CTA, and the precise determine could also be significantly lower. This can also be mirrored within the variety of asylum seekers in NI. Recent knowledge from the Home Office exhibits that fewer than 2,400 individuals are in receipt of asylum help in NI. Although some people might enter through the land border and journey on to Great Britain to assert asylum, the accessible knowledge doesn’t counsel that it is a important quantity.

The Irish authorities, alternatively, says that in 2025 and 2026 roughly 88% and 90% respectively of first-time asylum candidates in Ireland made their preliminary software in individual on the International Protection Office (IPO) in Dublin, fairly than at a port or airport. Ireland’s then-Minister for Justice Helen McEntee informed the Oireachtas Justice Committee in 2024 that ‘higher than 80%’ of latest asylum candidates had been arriving through the land border with NI. In 2024, Ireland acquired over 18,500 asylum functions. However, within the absence of bodily border controls, these figures depend on self-reporting and are due to this fact not verifiable. Thus, there seems to have been a disproportionate motion from North to South, significantly in 2024, when some asylum seekers within the UK feared removing to Rwanda.

Asylum coverage both aspect of the border is more likely to form the course of motion, as knowledgeable asylum seekers reply to whichever system seems extra beneficial. This may additionally encourage some motion from Great Britain to NI the place some EU regulation nonetheless applies below the Windsor Framework and might override conflicting UK legal guidelines. For occasion, the NI High Court held that key provisions of the Illegal Migration Act 2023 could not lawfully apply in NI as a result of they had been incompatible with Article 2 of the Windsor Framework, which requires that Brexit should not trigger diminution (i.e., discount) of sure rights (e.g., anti-discrimination rights) below the Good Friday Agreement. However, this judgment will now have to be thought-about in mild of the more moderen Dillion case the place the Supreme Court narrowed the attain of the non-diminution assure.

To handle potential CTA abuse, joint cooperative operational frameworks have been arrange. Operation Gull (Operation Sonnet on the Irish aspect) is an intelligence-led Garda and UK Border Force initiative working alongside the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and a Cross-Border Joint Action Task Force (JATF). Following the Belfast riots, each governments pledged to accentuate cooperation and crackdown on unlawful migrants.

To conclude, there’s little proof that CTA is broadly abused by asylum seekers to succeed in the UK. However, it must be managed. The major challenge appears to be the collapse of the post-Brexit returns mechanism and the diverging asylum requirements between the UK and EU/ Ireland. Ireland has opted into a lot of the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum (which got here into drive in June 2026) and due to this fact should implement harmonised EU asylum guidelines. The path ahead might lie in strengthening the enforcement and cooperation infrastructure similar to a functioning bilateral returns settlement whereas recognising the authorized constraints imposed by Windsor Framework and worldwide refugee regulation.

By Ali Ahmadi, Research Associate, University of Cambridge and PhD pupil at Anglia Ruskin University, Catherine Barnard, Senior Fellow, UK in a Changing Europe & Professor of EU Law and Employment Law, University of Cambridge and Fiona Costello, Assistant Professor, University of Birmingham.