The migrants risking everything to reach Britain

Telegraph

05-03-2025

Wintry sleet pelts down outside the bus that Aland and Shino, a couple from Iraq, are riding in the north of France.
They're praying the weather tonight will improve so that they can attempt, for a fourth time, to cross the Channel to the UK.
I'm riding with them on the bus, which is bumping along the 25 miles between Calais and Dunkirk, stopping in small towns along the way. As we travel, they tell me about their plan.
The idea, as directed by smugglers to whom they've paid €10,000 (£8,280), is to sneak on to a specific lorry parked in Dunkirk that will drive to the port of Calais and on to a ferry bound for Dover.
'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,'' says Shino, 33.
As increased patrols by British and French authorities seeking to halt irregular Channel crossings by boat have turned more violent and risky, some migrants like Aland and Shino believe the lorry-to-ferry option will be safer, even though it can be a long journey.
As we sit on the bus, Shino points out a depot where they once spent 17 hours on board a truck before finally giving up. A smuggler had told them to get on the lorry on a Friday and hide for three days until it drove down to Calais on Monday.
But they couldn't stand being cooped up inside for that long. For Aland, who is five months pregnant with the couple's first child, it is particularly difficult.
The two refugees met and married in Germany after they had both separately left Iraq. But now, the couple hopes to get to the UK by whatever means possible to reunite with the rest of Aland's family before she gives birth.
'It's simple when you say it like that … they want to join their parents, sister or brother in the UK,' said Feyrouz Lajili, a field coordinator in Calais for Doctors Without Borders.
'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.'
At each bus stop, pensioners and students pile aboard, sitting down next to migrants including Iraqi Kurds like Aland and Shino, as well as war refugees from Sudan.
It's an interesting, diverse mix of people, but it strikes me that while these two worlds co-exist, there seems to be little interaction between them.
For the French who live along the coast, it has become a fact of life, with lifejackets and rubber boats littering beaches going further and further south – as far down as Berck, about 80 miles from Dunkirk.
Smugglers are launching boats along a much longer swathe of coastline in an attempt to evade detection. For migrants, this means taking more risks, as they have to travel longer distances across the Channel.
It has led to more deaths – 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.
There are also migrants who cannot afford to pay the smugglers. Often coming from Sudan, these refugees are penniless, fleeing the horrors of war and the worst famine the country has seen in 40 years.
They may try to stow away by leaping on to lorries when drivers are parking or slowing down at roundabouts, aiming to land between the driver's cabin and the cargo bed. This is an option so dangerous that two people are believed to have died in this way in the last month alone.
In his three months in France, Aziz, 16, whose name has been changed to protect his privacy and who comes from Darfur, has tried twice to stow away on a boat and tried 30 times to jump on to a truck.
In between all this, he sometimes stops at a youth centre in Calais run by Doctors Without Borders, where he hangs out with other Sudanese boys. For him, it's a brief moment of relative normalcy in what is otherwise a dangerous and difficult life.
For Aziz, Aland and Shino, their daily routine means shuffling between migrant camps and the occasional aid shelter where they might be able to have a warm meal, then trying yet again to get across the Channel.
Sometimes, it includes a stint in custody, as it did for Aland and Shino this morning, when they were again discovered in a lorry and shooed away by French police.
Still, nothing seems to dim their resolve to find what they hope will be a safe haven in the UK. 'Even if it cost 20,000 euros for each of us', said Shino, 'I would pay.'