--- a/taskcluster/docker/debian-base/Dockerfile
+++ b/taskcluster/docker/debian-base/Dockerfile
@@ -37,19 +37,21 @@ RUN for s in debian_$DIST debian_$DIST-u
     ) > /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/99taskcluster
 
 RUN apt-get update && \
     apt-get install \
       apt-transport-https \
       ca-certificates
 
 COPY setup_packages.sh /usr/local/sbin/
+COPY cloud-mirror-workaround.sh /usr/local/sbin/
 
 # %ARG DOCKER_IMAGE_PACKAGES
 RUN /usr/local/sbin/setup_packages.sh $DOCKER_IMAGE_PACKAGES && \
+    echo 'dir::bin::methods::https "/usr/local/sbin/cloud-mirror-workaround.sh";' > /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/99cloud-mirror-workaround && \
     apt-get update && \
     apt-get install \
       git \
       make \
       mercurial \
       python \
       xz-utils
 

new file mode 100755
--- /dev/null
+++ b/taskcluster/docker/debian-base/cloud-mirror-workaround.sh
@@ -0,0 +1,10 @@
+#!/bin/sh
+
+# The apt in Debian stretch mishandles the HTTP redirects from queue.taskcluster.net to
+# cloud-mirror.taskcluster.net, and unescapes the url. This apt method wrapper
+# strips redirections and sends directly to the S3 bucket. This has the downside of
+# always hitting us-west-2 independently of the zone this runs on, but this is only
+# used when creating docker images, so shouldn't generate huge cross-AWS-zone S3
+# transfers.
+
+/usr/lib/apt/methods/https | sed -u 's,^New-URI: https://cloud-mirror.taskcluster.net/v1/redirect/[^/]*/[^/]*/https://,New-URI: https://,'

--- a/taskcluster/taskgraph/transforms/job/debian_package.py
+++ b/taskcluster/taskgraph/transforms/job/debian_package.py
@@ -177,19 +177,17 @@ def docker_worker_debian_package(config,
         # Build the package
         'DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS="parallel=$(nproc) nocheck" dpkg-buildpackage && '
         # Copy the artifacts
         'mkdir -p {artifacts}/debian && '
         'dcmd cp ../{package}_*.changes {artifacts}/debian/ && '
         'cd {artifacts} && '
         # Make the artifacts directory usable as an APT repository.
         'apt-ftparchive sources debian | gzip -c9 > debian/Sources.gz && '
-        'apt-ftparchive packages debian | gzip -c9 > debian/Packages.gz && '
-        'apt-ftparchive release -o APT::FTPArchive::Release::Codename={dist} debian > Release && '
-        'mv Release debian/'
+        'apt-ftparchive packages debian | gzip -c9 > debian/Packages.gz'
         .format(
             package=package,
             snapshot=run['snapshot'],
             dist=run['dist'],
             src_url=src_url,
             src_file=src_file,
             src_sha256=src_sha256,
             unpack=unpack,