Latest news with #ChannelCrossing
The Independent
2 hours ago
- Politics
- The Independent
More than 400 migrants arrive in the UK crossing the Channel in small boats
More than 400 further migrants have arrived in the UK having crossed the Channel in small boats despite the French police taking a tougher stance to control the departures. According to Home Office figures, 437 people made the crossing on Friday June 20 in seven boats, bringing the total for the year so far to 17,817. This compares to 12,313 by the same date in 2024 and 10,518 in 2023 while 11,690 had made the crossing by June 20 in 2022. The latest arrivals come after Sir Keir Starmer said the situation was 'deteriorating' and threatened a visa crackdown. The Prime Minister signalled that countries which did not do enough to tackle the irregular migration crisis, for example by taking back failed asylum seekers, could face repercussions in the numbers of visas issued to their citizens. Sir Keir's message came as French police were seen to employ more robust tactics on the beaches this week including using teargas. But they were also seen to stand by and watch once migrants had entered the water to board a dinghy in the hope of crossing the English Channel.
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
More than 400 migrants arrive in the UK crossing the Channel in small boats
More than 400 further migrants have arrived in the UK having crossed the Channel in small boats despite the French police taking a tougher stance to control the departures. According to Home Office figures, 437 people made the crossing on Friday June 20 in seven boats, bringing the total for the year so far to 17,817. This compares to 12,313 by the same date in 2024 and 10,518 in 2023 while 11,690 had made the crossing by June 20 in 2022. The latest arrivals come after Sir Keir Starmer said the situation was 'deteriorating' and threatened a visa crackdown. The Prime Minister signalled that countries which did not do enough to tackle the irregular migration crisis, for example by taking back failed asylum seekers, could face repercussions in the numbers of visas issued to their citizens. Sir Keir's message came as French police were seen to employ more robust tactics on the beaches this week including using teargas. But they were also seen to stand by and watch once migrants had entered the water to board a dinghy in the hope of crossing the English Channel.
Daily Mail
3 days ago
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Twenty-four hours after failing to board a small boat to get to England, a determined migrant on crutches finally succeeded
Less than 24 hours after abandoning his attempt to head for Britain, a desperate migrant on crutches finally succeeded in his bid to cross the channel. The bearded middle-aged man, who could only hobble towards the waves aided by a friend, was featured in today's paper as a graphic illustration of how France is unable to stop the tide of dinghies across the Channel. On Tuesday, despite the firing of tear gas grenades by 50 armed French police equipped with riot shields, your reporter watched as even this disabled migrant was able to slip through the thin blue line of gendarmes on Gravelines beach near Calais. And he reached the water – whereupon he was protected by increasingly controversial rules barring officers from even touching migrants or their dinghies. On that occasion he was not able to join maybe 60-plus fellow travellers on the giant 'taxi boat' dinghy which arrived to pick them up. Scores of others were hauled aboard as police and officials watched, from land and four sea craft, without doing anything. But the dinghy was too full for the disabled migrant to be pulled on, and he limped, sodden, back to shore. The Mail predicted he would surely try again the next day. He did just that, at the exact same spot. Scores of migrants were hauled aboard as police and officials watched, from land and four sea craft, without doing anything With no police even in sight this time, he was first in the queue to be dragged on to yet another 'taxi' dinghy. As the sun rose at 5.30am, his crutch was held aloft like Excalibur as his fellow migrants helped him aboard. Within minutes, as we again watched, the rubber boat was full to bursting, around 20 migrants sitting on each side and more in the middle. It then set off across the Channel towards England, passing over the horizon within a quarter of an hour. Whether it arrived is unclear. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, who scrapped the Conservative plan to send small boat arrivals to Rwanda, continues to declare he will be able to 'smash the gangs' and stop the boats with the aid of French police, who we are sending millions to. Yet the migrants continue to exploit the loophole which means once they are in the sea, even up to the ankles, police will touch neither them nor their dinghies, through fear of harming them, meaning they are free to sail to England. And police have told the Mail there are simply too many migrants, and too much shoreline near England, for them ever to be stopped - particularly as they are confident they will be welcomed here. There may have been a reason no police were at dinghy hotspot Gravelines meanwhile. Sixteen police fans and a giant digger later turned up the main migrant camp a few miles inland between a major road and railway line at Grande-Synthe. Gazebos used by migrants as shops selling food, cigarettes and mobile phones, plus holding information on illicit channel crossings, were smashed to bits, and migrants told to keep away. Yet again, the effect was limited. Even with officers and the digger still there, a huge queue of 200 migrants and more soon gathered literally a stone's throw away to receive free food distributed by a charity. They showed no sign of wanting to go anywhere. Except England. A Kurdish Iraqi living in the area, who asked not to be named, said: 'Of course migrants are upset the police have destroyed their shops - and are searching the site for weapons used in feuds between them. 'But they'll just set up again nearby. And be even more determined to get in a dinghy across the Channel.' Latest figures show £3.1 billion was spent on housing asylum seekers in hotels in 2023-24, out of a total asylum support bill of £4.7 billion. More than 30,000 asylum seekers are housed in about 200 hotels across Britain, many of whom arrived illegally in dinghies, and ministers are looking at moving them into derelict tower blocks and student digs. But despite Ms Reeves' pledge to end the use of hotels, the Tories pointed out that the small print of her Spending Review documents revealed that £2.5 billion will still be spent each year on asylum support by the end of the decade.
BBC News
4 days ago
- Politics
- BBC News
Smugglers deploy 'taxi boats' to collect migrants off the French coast
As the weather in the Channel clears, the French police are struggling to halt a potentially record-breaking surge of people from reaching the UK in small boats organised by a growing network of smuggling gangs. Downing Street said on Tuesday the situation was "deteriorating."Although the French authorities claim they're now intercepting more than two thirds of those boats before they reach the sea, the smugglers are now changing tactics to launch so-called "taxi boats" from new sites, in new ways, and with ever greater of inflating their boats in the dunes along the coast, close to police patrols, the gangs are launching them from better hidden locations, often dozens of kilometres from the main departure beaches. They then cruise along the coastline, like taxis or buses, picking up their paying customers who now wait in the sea, out of reach of the police. Just before sunrise, last Friday, we encountered a group of perhaps 80 people gathered in calm, waist-deep water, off a beach near the village of Wissant, south of Calais. There were several women and children in the group, from countries including Eritrea and counted eighteen French gendarmes watching them from the shore, declining to inflatable taxi boat, operated by a smuggling gang, had just arrived by sea and now circled repeatedly. Over the course of perhaps ten minutes, one man sitting at the front of the boat appeared to usher people forwards, to clamber onboard in relatively organised, even orderly, children clung, occasionally crying, to their relatives' shoulders."Yes, to England," one Afghan man told me, patiently waiting his turn, his eyes focused firmly on the taxi boat system appears to give the smugglers a little more control over what has often been a chaotic, and dangerous process, involving large crowds dragging boats to the water and then scrambling onboard. A little over a year ago, I watched the result on a nearby beach when about a hundred migrants tried to pile onto the same boat. Five people, including a seven-year-old girl, were trampled or suffocated to death. On Friday morning, Colonel Olivier Alary stood, dry-footed, watching the taxi boat load up. He explained that the current operational rules for his forces were clear. They would intervene to rescue someone if they were about to drown. They might even attempt to stop the boat if it became trapped on a sandbank. But it was simply too risky, for all involved, for the police to try to reach the boat now it was afloat."The police will be able to do more… if the rules governing our actions at sea are changed," said Alary, referring to the French government's declared intention to revise those rules, possibly in the coming weeks, to give the police more leeway."It's essential that we don't create panic and endanger these people further. If the rules change to allow us to intervene against these taxi boats, as close as possible to the shore, then we'll be able… to be more effective," said Alary, as the fully loaded boat finally set off north-westwards, towards the English coast. Although some officers say there is already some wiggle-room for the police in terms of how strictly they interpret the existing rules, many are fearful that they might face serious legal trouble."I can understand an average British person watching this on television might say, 'Damn, those police don't want to intervene.' But it's not like that. Imagine people on a boat panic and we end up with children drowning. The police officer who intervened would end up in a French court. It's a complicated business, but we can't fence off the entire coastline. It's not the Second World War," said Marc Musiol, of the police union, Unity."If we don't have the orders, we don't move. Even if there's one centimetre of water, we don't intervene. It's frustrating," said his union colleague, Marc Alegrè.As a result, the French forces, now patrolling more than 120km (75 miles) of coastline in northern France, focus all their attention on trying to intercept the smugglers' boats before they while that interception rate is rising, the smugglers are changing their own tactics fast. We'd first joined Colonel Alary and his men soon after midnight on Friday. It was the fourth full night our team had spent on the beaches in recent weeks. Alary's unit was busy using infra-red drones, paid for by the British government, to spot and track several hundred migrants who'd gathered in smaller groups along the coast, having arrived by bus and on foot over the course of Thursday afternoon and evening. On a monitor, we could clearly see one group, gathered around a makeshift campfire in a forest near the beach."But it's the smugglers we're after. If we move towards the migrants now, they'll just disperse," said at around five in the morning, to the visible frustration of the police, reports came in of a successful taxi boat launch further up the coast."Let's go," said arrived, some minutes later, at a shingle beach beside the old fishing village of Audresselles, just south of Cap Gris-Nez. A black Volvo V50, doors open, was stuck fast, up to its axles in car had clearly been driven at high speed, across the main road and straight towards the sea. "They're adapting, again," said Colonel Olivier Alary, inspecting the black cords that the smuggling gang had used to tie a large inflatable boat, precariously, to the Volvo's smugglers had evidently inflated the boat in a shed or farm building close by, then driven it the short distance to the beach, untied it, dragged it the last few metres to the water, and were safely on their way within a matter of seconds, heading north to collect their paying passengers from other points along the coast much like bus or a taxi – hence the "taxi boat" nickname."This is the third time it's happened in this area," grumbled Alary, of an emerging new tactic used by the smugglers. The police, armed with night-vision binoculars and drones, have become skilled at spotting the moment the smugglers start to inflate their rubber boats. This normally happens in the dunes and forests on the coast or beside rivers and canals. It is a period of maximum vulnerability for the gangs and their clients. Using up to six electric pumps per boat, the smugglers can often finish the job in less than fifteen minutes. But the inflated boats are large, unwieldy, and hard to move by police often have time to intercept the inflatables before they're dragged towards the water, usually by a dozen or more people. Officers, sometimes using pepper spray and stun grenades to clear a path, then slash the boats with knives to render them unusable. The BBC has seen police body-cam footage showing people hurling rocks at officers and even holding a young child in front of the police to try to stop to the French police, the gangs – which we understand are now growing in number in the Calais area as demand for crossings increases – have not only begun inflating their boats in secrecy, hidden in buildings close to the beaches, but have threatened local farmers who have objected to their some of these taxi boat launches – designed to exploit the French police's unwillingness to intervene at sea – take place close to the main migrant departure areas around Calais and Boulogne, some boats are now setting off from much further Friday morning, Alary told us, there had just been a successful taxi boat launch from Cayeux-Sur-Mer, a village about 100 kilometres south beyond the river Somme. He anticipated that it would arrive here around noon and start trying to pick up passengers near Boulogne. One unintended consequence of the smuggler's growing dependence on the taxi boat system is that it gives young men an advantage over women and children, who often struggle to climb onboard from the sea."I've tried [to cross] twelve times now," said Luna, a Somali woman from Mogadishu. She described incidents of police violence on the beaches and the experience of being left behind while men clambered onto the boats."Sometimes the police are very violent. I've been hit myself. They put tear gas – something in the air – you can't breathe. Sometimes the boat is very far [out to sea]. That's why women and children are left behind so many times. It's so dangerous, so risky. We cannot swim. I don't want to die," Luna said, as she waited for a meal at an informal migrant camp near Dunkirk. She added that after one and a half months trying to complete the journey to the UK, she had no plans to quit. Meanwhile, having failed to stop the taxi boat launch on the shingle beach at Audresselles, Colonel Alary was not yet ready to give up either."Let's go. The boat is going north towards Cap Griz Nez. We're going to try to intercept them," he said, as his team rushed towards their we followed the police, we could see the boat – a thin black smudge on a milky sea – to our left. But by the time we'd got to Wissant, 15 minutes later, it was already too late. The migrants were in the water, and the taxi boat was already half in all, it had not been a good night for the French police. Alary's forces claimed four successful interceptions on land. But along the whole coast, a total of 14 boats had made it to sea, carrying 919 people to the UK. Later that morning, on a brief trip to sea on a police patrol boat, Colonel Alary reflected on the battle to stop the smugglers. There were so many challenges – from the heavy equipment worn by police which made it dangerous for them to enter the water safely, to the inherent instability of the inflatable boats, which made them too vulnerable to stop at sea without risk of Alary said the UK itself held the key to solving this crisis."It should be kept in mind that 30% of all the migrants entering the European Union end up here, in the Calais area. They travel from all over Europe to come here… because the United Kingdom is attracting them. England is attractive. It encourages migrants to want to join it. The solution is to make England less attractive, then people would remain [at home or in the EU]."That belief - in the UK's magnetic pull for migrants – remains the conventional wisdom among both French officials and many of those risking their lives to cross the Channel. On a much windier day last week, on a beach beside an old Bourbon-era fort in the village of Ambleteuse, I met a former fisherman, Stéphane Pinto, who is now the local mayor."For migrants, the UK is still seen as an El Dorado. The British need to address this issue more forcefully," he said. If it didn't, Pinto warned of growing violence between police, local communities, and a rising wave of migration from an increasingly troubled world."This is no longer just a problem linked to dictatorship or war. It is growing due to what's happening globally: climate change, the collapse of economies in some countries, and so on. We feel there is a new wave growing today, and unless we really tackle it, we will sadly only be spectators of what will happen in the coming years."
The Independent
4 days ago
- Politics
- The Independent
Channel crisis ‘deteriorating', No 10 admits as French use tear gas on migrants
French police teargassed migrants desperately trying to reach the UK as No 10 admitted the situation at the English Channel was getting worse. Hundreds gathered on the dunes before making dashes towards the Channel at Gravelines beach near Calais, all intent on boarding a single dinghy on Tuesday morning. The French authorities stood by and watched as those not deterred by the gas waded into the water intent on boarding a single dinghy to risk the Channel crossing. The scenes at Gravelines unfolded just hours after a meeting between Sir Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron in Canada to address a situation No 10 acknowledged was 'deteriorating'. Some 16,545 people have crossed in small boats so far in 2025 according to Home Office figures, a 45% increase on the same period in 2024. At Gravelines on Tuesday, migrants of all ages who made it to the sea had to wait in waist-deep water for almost an hour before any of them were able to board the small boat. An older man on crutches had to be carried out of the water by two others, who then ran off to re-join the crowd. Many others did not make it to the water, raising their arms in surrender under a thick blanket of tear gas fired by the French Police Nationale. Officers were trudging the sands at Gravelines beach before the sun had risen on Tuesday morning, armed with riot shields, tear gas and batons. Pictures taken by the PA news agency show a cloud of smoke as migrants ran from the dunes. A warning cry of 'baby, baby' was heard as a man carrying a tiny child sprinted out of the smog. Those who made it to the water bunched into three groups and waited for the dinghy to collect them, watched by the French police from the shoreline. While they waited, an Afghani migrant who wished to remain anonymous told PA that he was seeking a better life in the UK. 'Just I want to go for a good life, I have a situation bad in my country,' he said. Well over 50 migrants made it aboard the small black dinghy before it finally took off into the Channel. Others were left to watch as it floated out to sea. Pictures from the morning show a woman sitting dejected on the sand after chasing the dinghy as it left the beach. She and her friends, thought to be Ethiopian, complained that it was mostly men who had managed to get on the boat that morning. They had been hit by tear gas when the migrants were making their initial sprint to the water. The dinghy, which had originally come to shore around 7am local time (6am BST), headed out to sea at 9.30am. The boat appeared to be overloaded and witnesses saw it was eventually brought back to shore at around 11am local time. The police present on Gravelines beach would not confirm whether the use of tear gas had now become common practice during these clashes. A beach comber who has begun to document crossings was watching events unfold on Tuesday. The 28-year-old said of French police: 'I think they show them that they tried to stop them but they're happy if a few hundred or thousand are away because the camps are more empty.' The Prime Minister and Mr Macron will hold a summit in July focused on tackling the migration problem, No 10 said after a meeting between the pair in the margins of the G7 in Canada. ' Migration should be a key focus given the deteriorating situation in the Channel, they confirmed – adding that they should continue to work closely with other partners to find innovative ways to drive forward progress,' an official readout of the meeting said. Downing Street acknowledged there were 'no quick fixes', but insisted action was already being taken and 'the days of Britain being a soft touch for these gangs are over'. That includes measures aimed at getting the French authorities to intervene even if migrants are already in the sea. Asked if the Government approved of the use of tear gas, the spokesman said: 'Our work with the French has never been closer. 'We are the first government to have secured agreement from the French to review their laws so their border enforcement teams can intervene in shallow waters.' Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said: 'Starmer is right, under his watch the Channel crisis is spiralling out of control.' He said 2025 was the worst year on record but Labour's answer was 'to ask the British taxpayer to foot the bill for their accommodation or to pay half a billion pounds for the French to wave the boats off and do next to nothing to prevent Channel crossings'. He added: 'The gangs are laughing, the boats keep coming, and Labour's response is to form another taskforce and hold a summit. It's weak and it's embarrassing.'
