The Common Travel Area (CTA) and Asylum

Ali Ahmadi, Catherine Barnard and Fiona Costello explain what the Common Travel Area is, how it works, and whether it is used as a route for those seeking asylum.

During the evening 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 injuries. Within hours, reports of the suspect’s identity and route into NI had fuelled rioting. As violence spread across Belfast, political attention quickly shifted to the Common Travel Area (CTA) and whether it had become a ‘backdoor’ into the UK.

The CTA is a border arrangement between the UK and the Republic of Ireland that has existed (with brief interruptions) since the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922, when both governments agreed that citizens could move between the two jurisdictions without restriction. The CTA covers the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. It allows British and Irish nationals to live, work, and have access to public services in either country, without immigration formalities. They are not legally required to carry a passport when crossing the land border between NI and the Republic, though airlines and ferry companies may require photo ID.

The primary piece of legislation giving CTA a statutory footing is the Ireland Act 1949 which provides that the Republic of Ireland is not a ‘foreign country’. Similarly, the British Nationality Act 1981 says that a citizen of the Republic of Ireland is not an ‘alien’. The Immigration Act 1971 also recognised the CTA in UK immigration law by exempting Irish nationals from routine immigration controls. Following Brexit, this was reaffirmed in the Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Act 2020, which provides that Irish citizens do not require leave to enter or remain in the UK. The arrangement is reciprocated in Irish law through instruments such as Aliens (Exemption) Order 1999 and the Withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union (Consequential Provisions) Act 2020.

The CTA does not extend the same free movement rights to non-citizens. Third-country nationals (people who are neither British nor Irish) must comply with the immigration rules of whichever country they enter. There is no general mutual recognition of visas between the UK and Ireland (with limited exceptions, such as a bilateral scheme for Indian and Chinese nationals). Those requiring a visa for one country will usually need a separate visa for the other. However, there are no routine immigration checks on the Irish border and undocumented migrants are unlikely to be detected except through intelligence-led operations or on-the-spot passport checks by law enforcement.

When it comes to asylum seekers, CTA management was smoothed by the two countries’ shared membership of the EU. The Dublin III Regulation provided a mechanism for transferring asylum seekers between the UK and Ireland.. However, in practice, the mechanism resulted in very few transfers between the two countries. According to the Home Office, between 2015 and 2020, only 50 people were transferred from the UK to Ireland, while 55 people were transferred from Ireland to the UK. Post-Brexit, this arrangement no longer applies Although the UK and Ireland signed an informal returns agreement in 2020 to replicate some of Dublin III’s functions, it has been almost entirely non-operational, in part because of legal proceedings in Ireland’s High Court regarding the designation of the UK as a ‘safe third country’ while the Rwanda deportation policy remained in force. Consequently, only one person has been returned from the UK to Ireland under the agreement.

Data on how many asylum seekers arrive through the CTA is incomplete. Home Office asylum data shows that, in the year ending March 2026, 8% (7,740) of asylum seekers entered the country via ‘other routes’ which includes CTA-related entries. However, there is no breakdown of how many of these arrivals specifically came through the CTA, and the actual figure may be significantly lower. This is also reflected in the number of asylum seekers in NI. Recent data from the Home Office shows that fewer than 2,400 people are in receipt of asylum support in NI. Although some individuals may enter via the land border and travel on to Great Britain to claim asylum, the available data does not suggest that this is a significant number.

The Irish government, on the other hand, says that in 2025 and 2026 approximately 88% and 90% respectively of first-time asylum applicants in Ireland made their initial application in person at the International Protection Office (IPO) in Dublin, rather than at a port or airport. Ireland’s then-Minister for Justice Helen McEntee told the Oireachtas Justice Committee in 2024 that ‘higher than 80%’ of new asylum applicants were arriving via the land border with NI. In 2024, Ireland received over 18,500 asylum applications. However, in the absence of physical border controls, these figures rely on self-reporting and are therefore not verifiable. Thus, there appears to have been a disproportionate movement from North to South, particularly in 2024, when some asylum seekers in the UK feared removal to Rwanda.

Asylum policy either side of the border is likely to shape the direction of movement, as informed asylum seekers respond to whichever system appears more favourable. This might also encourage some movement from Great Britain to NI where some EU law still applies under the Windsor Framework and can override conflicting UK laws. For instance, the NI High Court held that key provisions of the Illegal Migration Act 2023 could not lawfully apply in NI because they were incompatible with Article 2 of the Windsor Framework, which requires that Brexit must not cause diminution (i.e., reduction) of certain rights (e.g., anti-discrimination rights) under the Good Friday Agreement. However, this judgment will now need to be considered in light of the more recent Dillion case where the Supreme Court narrowed the reach of the non-diminution guarantee.

To address potential CTA abuse, joint cooperative operational frameworks have been set up. Operation Gull (Operation Sonnet on the Irish side) 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, both governments pledged to intensify cooperation and crackdown on illegal migrants.

To conclude, there is little evidence that CTA is widely abused by asylum seekers to reach the UK. However, it needs to be managed. The main issue seems to be the collapse of the post-Brexit returns mechanism and the diverging asylum standards between the UK and EU/ Ireland. Ireland has opted into most of the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum (which came into force in June 2026) and therefore must implement harmonised EU asylum rules. The path forward may lie in strengthening the enforcement and cooperation infrastructure such as a functioning bilateral returns agreement while recognising the legal constraints imposed by Windsor Framework and international refugee law.

By Ali Ahmadi, Research Associate, University of Cambridge and PhD student 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.