Smugglers find new ways to circumvent French police

People smugglers appear to be changing their tactics in response to a more aggressive approach by French police by driving dinghies to the shore and dumping the car.
Over the course of the past two years, smugglers have increasingly pursued a so-called 'taxi boat' strategy whereby they use France's inland waterways to drive the dinghies before cruising along the coast to pick up migrants who are told to wade into the water to be picked up.
This was to circumvent police patrols on the beaches, which used high-tech radar equipment provided by the British to detect boats hidden in the dunes along the coast. Smugglers would inflate the dinghies on the morning of the launches as migrants waited to board but after a 2023 deal with Rishi Sunak's government that significantly improved their detection equipment and led to two thirds of boats being stopped by the French police, the smugglers switched to the taxi boat model.

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The Guardian

12 hours ago

• The Guardian

French plans to stop small boats will lead to more deaths, says charity

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