France may deport five migrants who rode Britain-bound 'solidarity' bus

French police on Sunday detained five of about two dozen migrants who took part in a "solidarity march" staged by rights activists who had set off from southern France headed for Britain in late April.

The 24 people were ordered off a bus at the northern port of Calais as it was about to board a car ferry to cross the Channel, a local official told AFP.

The five are expected to be deported, while the others were let go because their papers were in order or their asylum applications were in process or completed, authorities said.

Activists of the Collectif des Sans-Papiers de Paris (CSP 75) decried the move, heading along with dozens of others to the Calais police station beating drums and shouting "Free Our Comrades".

France's Human Rights League (LDH) also demanded their release, saying "these people... are now deprived of their freedom for having participated, in a visible way, in a protest for a more open and welcoming world."

Francois Guennoc of the French charity L'Auberge that co-organised the march acknowledged that the group should not have been allowed to cross into Britain, but "what shocks us is that they were taken to a detention centre even though we were accompanying them and their presence was known."

Speaking from across the Channel in Dover, he added that the protesters had told French and British authorities that they had intended to take their protest into Britain only "for the day".

Guennoc and the other activists were expected to arrive in London later Sunday.

Several hundred people took part in the "solidarity" action, a series of relay marches that kicked off in the immigration hotspot of Ventimiglia, on the border between Italy and France, in late April.

They arrived in the Channel port of Calais on Saturday, marching past the site of the former ‘Jungle Camp’ that was home to about 10,000 people before being cleared by the French authorities, according to the RFI website.

That marked the end of the 69-day, 1,400-kilometre (870-mile) journey.