What a single day of migrant distress calls tells us about evolving smuggling tactics

Telegraph

28-02-2025

At 16 minutes past midnight on Feb 9, the first distress call came through.
Forty-five migrants were attempting to cross the Channel but encountered trouble and called the number given to them by a French non-profit.
This alert was one of 20 that Utopia 56 would receive over the next 24 hours. Added together, they concerned 655 people trying to make the treacherous crossing.
The actual figures, though, are likely higher. Some 60 migrants made it to the UK that day on two boats, according to Home Office data, while others may not have called for help. The following morning, the bodies of two men washed up on shore.
The Telegraph has mapped the distress calls that day to show the growing stretch of coastline from which people smugglers and migrants are setting sail in order to evade detection from increased patrols, offering a snapshot of the challenge facing French and British authorities in a high-stakes game of cat-and-mouse.
They have also adopted increasingly dangerous tactics – making the task even greater.
Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, visited Bruno Retailleau, her hardline French counterpart, on Thursday to discuss what can be done.
While she was there, Mr Retailleau announced that he was seeking a law change to allow migrants to be tackled out of boats in shallow water.
French law currently prohibits police from tackling a migrant boat once it has entered the water, leaving officers only able to launch a rescue operation.
Smugglers are using increasingly drastic tactics to avoid being stopped. This includes sending densely packed boats from multiple locations, as reflected in the distress calls, moving far beyond Calais, the narrowest point of the Channel at about 20 miles wide.
Departures now run as far north as Dunkirk near the border to Belgium – and sometimes even from Belgium – and as far south as the charming seaside town of Berck, across the Channel from Eastbourne in the UK.
Some smugglers have also moved further inland, attempting to travel from the narrow canals of northern France that flow out into the Channel.
Others continue to sneak migrants on lorries parked in Dunkirk, which then drive down to the port of Calais and load onto ferries bound for Dover.
The fast-evolving tactics mean British and French authorities must contend with more territory, which is becoming near-impossible to police in its entirety: it is not feasible to completely seal off any route.
Discoveries of new departure points and routes often occur once corpses wash up, as it was on Feb 10 when the bodies of two men were found on the sandy beaches of Berck.
Last March, a seven-year-old girl died when a boat overturned in a canal in Gravelines, just next to Dunkirk.
Feyrouz Lajili, a field coordinator in Calais for Doctors Without Borders, said: 'What we see is that more reinforcement of the border doesn't deter people from crossing, but what happens is that people take more and more risks; and more and more people die.
'There are more and more new methods to cross. Now boats are leaving even further south, where the distance can double or triple according to where you leave, which makes the crossings even more dangerous.'
This is reflected in the numbers: 2024 was the deadliest year on record for Channel crossings with at least 80 deaths, including a four-month-old infant, according to the UN's migration agency.
With deaths ticking up, some migrants believe the lorry-to-ferry option will be safer.
Aland and Shino, a couple from Iraq hoping to find refuge in the UK, have attempted this route a few times, as directed by smugglers to whom they paid €10,000 (£8,266).
Shino, 33, said: 'One time, when the driver discovered us, he said to me: 'Sorry, you didn't have luck this time; you'll have to try again.''
What they pay smugglers for is information – where to go, when to go – as well as support to break into the truck and lock the doors behind them.
They can make as many attempts as they're willing to stomach, as long as they have money to cover expenses such as food. The couple will, in the end, pay smugglers the same amount regardless of whether it takes one, or multiple, attempts to arrive in the UK – an arrangement meant as a guarantee for both parties.
Smugglers continue to improvise as French police have deployed more patrols and surveillance technology, bolstered by about £500 million in funding from the UK.
Many roads that turn off toward the coastline have police vans parked on bends. Officers have resorted to puncturing or otherwise sabotaging the boats so they cannot inflate.
Smugglers sometimes float the boat away from the shore with only a few people on board. They then rev the engine and pick up migrants swimming in the cold water to avoid being spotted by drones looking for large groups, in a method referred to as 'taxi boats'.
Boarding the boat this way is a terrifying experience for many people, some of whom sustain injuries or die in the process.
'Deaths are happening closer to shore,' said Ms Lajili, whose organisation routinely treats migrants with cuts, bruises and broken limbs from these rushed departures.
She added: 'People are dying at the moment when they are trying to leave, because there is a big moment of panic.'
It is this tactic that the new French initiative is targeting. The rule change will allow police to use their own boats for the first time, and tackle migrants out of the vessels.
With ramped-up border enforcement, smugglers have also begun overloading the boats with more migrants in hopes of getting a larger batch to the UK in one go, as they are typically paid only after migrants arrive.
Authorities have found as many as 90 people crammed onto a single vessel designed to hold far less in weight, increasing the chance of capsizing at sea.
This is reflected in government data. In 2024, almost 37,000 migrants arrived in the UK on about 690 boats – more than four times the number of people crossing the Channel in 2020, but on roughly the same number of vessels.
Adil, another Iraqi Kurd whom Aland and Shino met in France, also previously tried to go by boat, but police shot tear gas and ruptured the vessel. The violence and danger pushed him toward the lorry route, which he has tried a few times, also guided by a smuggler.
Adil spent his 28th birthday squeezed into a freezer truck full of apples. Police caught him seven hours later in Calais just before the lorry was due to load onto the ferry bound for Dover.
'When the police found me, they seemed so relieved that I was at least alive, and not dead, that they just let me go,' said Adil, whose black-and-white hoodie read 'Dream maker'.
For Adil, Aland and Shino, this has become somewhat of a daily routine – chased off a truck, occasionally taken into police custody and released, all before boarding a bus from Calais back to Dunkirk to try yet again with new directions in a phone call from the smuggler, usually in the late afternoon or early evening.
On the morning when those two bodies washed up in Berck, Aland and Shino were detained after French authorities found them sandwiched between palettes – particularly uncomfortable for Aland, 27, as she is expecting their first child.
'I'm either in prison, or on the truck,' Adil said, aboard a bus going toward Dunkirk as a mix of teenaged students, pensioners and more migrants climbed aboard. Dozens of migrants, lugging bags big and small, could be spotted waiting at bus stops along the route.
Adil is determined to get to the UK; over the past four years, he has tried three times to get to Europe, succeeding finally in January.
He changed his name and obtained a new passport to enter Turkey from Iraq – all to circumvent an entry ban as authorities had deported him after a failed attempt to journey to Europe.
This time, after arriving in Istanbul, he easily snuck overland thanks to a string of drivers who sped him from Turkey to Bulgaria, then onward to Germany.
'I got out of the car and walked around; I looked everywhere, to make sure that I really was in Germany,' Adil said.
Only then did he call his brother back in Iraq, who handed $12,000 (£9,469) in cash to a people smuggler.
Sudanese refugees
Stowaways on lorries and via boats – often refugees from Sudan who risk life and limb to cross for free, as they cannot afford to pay smugglers – are also a challenge to authorities.
Malik, a 24-year-old from Sudan, fled to Libya from where he snuck onto a ship without knowing where it was headed. He ended up in Italy.
From there, he made his way to France and started figuring out how to jam himself onto a boat bound for the UK – all without paying a penny to a smuggler.
Two months ago, he managed to follow a group of people all the way to the beach and even boarded the dinghy. But just as they tried to get the engine roaring, the French police pulled them back.
Some Sudanese migrants negotiate directly with smugglers on the beach loading boats.
These days, they are more likely to agree in order to prevent a fight, which could alert police and mean yet another stalled boat. Not all smugglers do, however, and instead shoot guns to scare people away and off the boat.
Others have tried to jump onto lorries when drivers park up or slow down at roundabouts, aiming for the space between the driver's cabin and the cargo bed. This is an extremely hazardous option that has led to at least one known fatality – a 20-year-old Sudanese man – in recent weeks.
In response, smugglers are beginning to offer lower rates for Sudanese migrants compared with the thousands of dollars or euros that others pay.
Police operations go beyond the beaches to tent sites – encampments guarded by smugglers armed with guns that are periodically cleared by officers, and spring up again elsewhere. Both officers and smugglers have died in camp altercations over the years.
'Killing in the jungle is even easier than lighting a cigarette,' said Adil.
Sometimes, he, Aland and Shino return to their tents in Grand-Synthe, hidden behind bare trees off a highway strip, to rest.
Despite several failed attempts, all three remain determined to stay the course.
'I want to join the rest of my family in the UK,' said Aland, who wants to give birth and raise her child in Britain.
Ms Lajili said: 'It's simple when you say it like that…they want to join their parents, sister or brother in the UK. We advocate for safe routes for people to be able to reach their destination without having to put themselves in danger and having to die.'
Shino said: 'Even if it cost 20,000 euros for each of us, I would pay.'