Latest news with #ChannelCrossing
Daily Mail
4 hours ago
- Business
- Daily Mail
Afghan men jailed for piloting boatload of 70 migrants across the Channel - in crossing that killed woman and child on same day Dunkirk flotilla set sail
Two Afghan men who piloted a boat carrying 70 migrants across the Channel, during the same crossing in which a woman and child died, have been jailed. Shah Salim Sajjadi, 38, and Safiollah Mohammadi, 25, were detained after the packed dinghy arrived onshore in Dover on May 21. The vessel was among 13 carrying 825 people in total, which crossed the Channel as a flotilla of 'Little Ships' took part in a Dunkirk evacuation memorial on the 85th anniversary of the WW2 rescue. During their 45-mile journey to remember the rescue from May 1940, Border Force and the French navy asked the boats to clear a one-mile area so the migrant dinghy could pass through. On departure from a beach near Calais earlier in the day, a woman and child were picked up by a French coastal patrol vessel from the overcrowded boat after it got into difficulty but were declared dead. At the time, French officials said most of the rest of the migrants aboard the inflatable refused rescue and carried on to UK. French police are now probing the deaths under the direction of the Dunkirk prosecutor's office, the National Crime Agency has said. After the boat's arrival in the UK, Sajjadi and Mohammadi were arrested and questioned by NCA investigators before being charged with facilitating illegal immigration to the UK. A group of migrants are brought in to Dover, Kent, onboard an RNLI Lifeboat after a crossing on May 21 They later pleaded guilty at a hearing at Folkestone Magistrates' Court on 24 May and have now been jailed for eight months. NCA Branch Commander Adam Berry said: 'This tragic incident demonstrates just how dangerous these crossings are, and the callous nature of those who organise them. 'The boat in question was dangerously overcrowded, but Sajjadi and Mohammadi chose to carry on their journey. 'We continue to work with French colleagues to investigate the circumstances of this crossing and the fatalities.' Refugee charity Utopia 56 said it alerted emergency services to the tragedy, writing on X at the time: '"The boat is broken, two people are dead." This is the information we received during a distress call in the English Channel this morning.' Chris Cox, who was coordinating the flotilla celebrating Operation Dynamo, described the moment one of the boats carrying migrants was spotted by a French vessel He said: 'There was a migrant boat in the water that was being covered by a French naval vessel. He added that after being notified, he steered clear 'and let the authorities look after it'. He added: 'For the people in the small boat, they have never done this before, and they don't know what to expect.' The recreation, however, was unhindered on its journey from Ramsgate to Dunkirk, save for the interruption from border officials and the French. The Telegraph reported that sailors were told in a maritime frequency message: 'There is a (French) warship on our head with a migrant (boat) close by. 'And we've been requested to give one nautical mile distance from that vessel, over.' A French-accented voice, believed to be from the French naval vessel Oyapock, then replied: 'Thank you, sir. Thank you very much.' Since Labour came into power, 38,049 people have crossed the English Channel on 685 boats. That averages around 114 migrants crossing per day, higher than the daily averages under Rishi Sunak, 81, and Boris Johnson, 57, but lower than during Liz Truss's brief tenure, when it reached 212. So far this year, a total of 14,807 people have made the crossing. It comes after nearly 1,200 migrants crossed the Channel to the UK in a single day, with one of Sir Keir Starmer's ministers saying over the weekend that control of Britain's borders had been lost. The Prime Minister faced backlash over what was described as a 'day of shame' as a surge in dinghy crossings overwhelmed both French and UK border patrols. The latest Home Office figures reveal that 1,194 migrants arrived in 18 boats, pushing the provisional total for the year so far to 14,811. This is 42 per cent higher than the 10,448 recorded at the same time last year and a staggering 95 per cent increase on the 7,610 from 2023, according to analysis by PA news agency. It is still lower than the highest daily total of 1,305 arrivals since data began in 2018, which was recorded on September 3, 2022. But the total of arrivals for the year, 14,811, is the highest ever recorded for the first five months of a year since data was first recorded on Channel crossings in 2018. It has also surpassed the highest total recorded for the first six months of the year, which was previously 13,489 on June 30 last year - and in 2024, the number of arrivals did not reach more than 14,000 until July 9, reaching 14,058. At Gravelines in northern France, more than half a dozen French police officers simply stood by on Saturday morning and watched as migrants waded into the sea and scrambled onto an inflatable boat. French authorities said they rescued 184 people. On Sunday, Defence Secretary John Healey told Trevor Phillips on Sky News: 'Pretty shocking, those scenes yesterday. 'The truth is, Britain's lost control of its borders over the last five years. 'The last government last year left an asylum system in chaos and record levels of immigration. 'But I think that yesterday tells us a really big problem, which is that you've got French police unable to intervene and intercept the boats when they are in shallow water. 'We saw the smugglers launching elsewhere and coming round like a taxi to pick them up.' Mr Healey insisted there was 'new co-operation' with the French, suggesting their officials would intervene in the water. When asked whether he was 'hacked off' with France for not doing so now, Mr Healey said: 'They are not doing it, but we've got the agreement that they will change the way they work. 'Our concentration now is to push them to get that into operation so they can intercept these smugglers and stop these people in the boats, not just on the shore.' Reacting to the huge crossing numbers, the Conservatives' former Home Secretary James Cleverly today said: 'The arrogance of Starmer, Cooper and the rest. 'They thought border control would be easy for the oh-so-clever progressive Labour government. They thought they could achieve more by doing less. Their hubris is now plain to see. 'I warned Yvette Cooper that scrapping the Rwanda agreement would send the wrong message to people smugglers. She ignored me. 'I said the Border Security Command duplicated the work of the Small Boats Operation Command and therefore wasn't adding value. She ignored me. 'Scrapping so many elements of the Illegal Migration Act and fast-tracking asylum acceptances would attract more illegal migration. 'She ignored me. And now we see the worst small boat arrival figures ever.'
Telegraph
4 hours ago
- Business
- Telegraph
‘Death trap' boats overloaded with migrants surge under Starmer
The number of overloaded dinghies crossing the Channel with more than 80 migrants on board has trebled in a year, Home Office figures have revealed. Ruthless people-smuggling gangs are cramming ever increasing numbers of people into flimsy dinghies in an attempt to maximise profits, the data showed. Some 33 small boats carrying more than 80 migrants were intercepted in the Channel in the year to April – up from 11 in the previous year and only one in the 12 months to April 2023. The number of dinghies with 70 to 79 people on board also increased nearly four-fold, from 35 to 123 in a year. Ministers have claimed the rising numbers are a consequence of an international crackdown on supply chains from China and in Europe, which has restricted smugglers' access to boats, engines and life jackets. 'We call them small boats, but honestly, they're not worthy of the name boat,' Sir Keir Starmer has previously said. 'To me, they look like death traps, flimsy rubber, no firm structure. You wouldn't even let your children climb aboard, even for a second, in shallow water.' At least 82 people, including 14 children, died trying to cross the Channel last year, according to the International Organisation for Migration. They lost their lives not only through drowning or hypothermia but also after being crushed inside boats that collapse in on themselves because they do not have wooden bases. Women and children crammed into the well of a boat are often the most vulnerable. As the Home Office statistics were published on Tuesday, two Afghans were jailed for eight months for piloting a dinghy across the Channel from France in a crossing attempt that saw a woman and child crushed to death. Shah Salim Sajjadi, 38, and Safiollah Mohammadi, 25, were arrested after a vessel packed with more than 70 people arrived into UK waters on May 21. Shortly after its departure from a beach near Calais earlier in the day, a woman and child had been pulled off the overcrowded boat by a French coastal patrol vessel but were declared dead. The Home Office data showed that the number of boats with 60 to 69 migrants on board increased from 118 in the year to April 2024 to 189 in the year to this April. This was up from 50 in 2023 and 13 in 2022. The number of boats with fewer than 60 people in them fell from 450 to 393. The figures also revealed that the surge in Channel migrants under Sir Keir could be partly blamed on the weather. There were 149 red days with calm seas suitable for crossings from the election last July to the end of this April. That was nearly double the 77 red days in the same period in the previous year under Rishi Sunak. It meant there were 33,183 migrant crossings on red days under Labour, compared with 21,139 under Mr Sunak – a 57 per cent increase. So far this year, there have been a record 14,812 migrants reaching the UK, the highest ever recorded in the first five months of a year and up 42 per cent on this time last year. According to the data, there were 60 red days between Jan 1 and April 30 this year, when factors such as wind speed, wave height and the likelihood of rain meant crossings were classed as 'likely' or 'highly likely'. Some 11,074 migrants arrived in the UK after crossing the Channel during these four months. There were 27 red days in the same period last year, less than half the number, with 7,567 crossings recorded – nearly a third lower than the total for this year. Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, said: 'Labour seems to think praying for bad weather is a good border security strategy. This is a weak Government, with no plan to end illegal immigrants crossing the Channel. 'They should never have cancelled the Rwanda removals deterrent before it even started. That's why 2025 is the worst year in history for illegal crossings – not the weather. Blaming the weather for the highest ever crossing numbers so far this year is the border security equivalent of a lazy student claiming 'the dog ate my homework'. 'This is a clear failure for our weak Prime Minister and his weak Home Secretary.' Assessments of the likelihood of migrant crossings are prepared for the Home Office by the Met Office. The assessments are colour-coded red, amber or green according to likelihood of activity based on environmental and other factors, including wave height, surf conditions on beaches, wind speed and direction, the chance of rain, and recent trends in conditions. If the probability of migrant activity in the Channel is greater than 55 per cent, crossings are classed as 'likely' or 'highly likely' (a red day). If the probability of activity is less than 35 per cent, crossings are considered 'unlikely' or 'highly unlikely' (a green day). Red days accounted for 35 per cent of all days and 84 per cent of total arrivals between May 2021 and April this year. A further 11 per cent of arrivals occurred on amber days and five per cent of arrivals on green days. All assessments are based on data recorded in the Dover Strait and do not consider other factors that can influence the number of arrivals, such as the availability of boats.
Times
7 hours ago
- Climate
- Times
Better weather leading to more small boats crossing Channel
Conditions for small boats crossing the Channel have been more favourable this year compared with previous years, while arrivals have also increased, according to figures released by the Home Office. The period between January and April this year had more than double the number of ' red days ' — when small boat activity is predicted to be more likely due to environmental conditions such as wave height and wind speed — than last year. There were 60 'red days' in 2025, while there were to 27 in the same period last year. This coincided with small boat arrivals being 46 per cent higher this January to April, with 11,074 people arriving, compared with 7,567 in the same period in 2024, according to the Home Office data.
The Sun
20 hours ago
- Business
- The Sun
Shameful pic of French cops watching migrants sail to Britain proves we've got to take action to stop small boats
SOMETIMES it takes a photograph to shift political debate. Hopefully, one such image will be that of French border guards standing on a beach watching on as yet another boat-load of migrants set sail across the Channel in a dinghy, heading for sanctuary in soft-touch Britain. 2 2 One of them seems even to be filming the occasion on his phone. The boat load they were watching was just one of 19 which made it across the Channel on Saturday. Between them, they carried 1,195 migrants, more than enough to fill yet one more migrant hotel. In case anyone had forgotten, we British taxpayers have handed £480million over the past year to the French authorities supposedly to police the shores and prevent boats from setting off. That was under a deal negotiated by former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in 2023, in which Britain agreed to fund a doubling in the number of French border control guards from 400 to 800. Go through the motions A more expensive and pointless job-creation scheme would be hard to imagine. Since Britain agreed to cough up the money, the proportion of would-be migrants being intercepted before they reach UK waters has fallen from 46.9 percent in 2023 to 38 percent so far in 2025. People-smugglers have got around the extra patrols by finding a new way to play the system: Rather than launch a boat- load of migrants directly from the beach they push the boats a few yards offshore and ask their clients to wade into the waters. That, apparently, confounds the French border guards ' rules of engagement, hence they just stand and watch. But let's be frank and ask: Do the French really have any intention of stopping these boats? Starmer 'loses control' as over 1,000 migrants cross Channel in biggest daily total of 2025 – as French cops watch on Needless to say, every migrant who leaves French territory is one fewer the French authorities have to worry about. It makes perfect sense for the French to take our money and then go through the motions of pretending to stop migrants, while in practice letting them go. If Emmanuel Macron 's government really wanted to stop the boats it could do so in an instant by doing a deal with Britain in which it agreed to the systematic return of every migrant who made it across the Channel. If asylum seekers were obliged to do as international treaties supposedly insist they do, and make their claim in the first safe country in which they arrive, Channel crossings would all but cease. Let's be frank and ask: Do the French really have any intention of stopping these boats? There would no longer be any point in making a dangerous journey only to be shipped back immediately to France. But of course France won't do that sort of deal because it doesn't want the burden of thousands of extra asylum seekers to process. Meanwhile, our own government has thrown away the one tool which Sunak had painstakingly added to Britain's feeble border force armoury: The Rwanda scheme. How foolish Labour's rejection of the scheme looks now. Keir Starmer is now talking about a similar plan to process asylum claims in the Balkans, but sorry, it is too late. Labour tries to claim the credit for a fall in overall net migration, which was entirely the result of visa changes by the Conservatives, while hoping we will somehow fail to notice the sharp rise in small- boat crossings since it came to power 11 months ago. The Border Command which was supposed to tackle people-smugglers has proved to be a farce. Since the election, 38,054 migrants have arrived by small boat, with numbers this year running ahead of any previous year. The Rwanda scheme might have been expensive in terms of the cost per migrant, but that misses the point. In practice, we may have ended up having to send rather few asylum seekers to Rwanda because migrants would have had such a disincentive to travel to Britain in the first place. In the end we have the worst of all worlds. We have more and more migrant arrivals while we are still picking up the tab for the abortive Rwanda scheme. Paying dearly Accommodation funded by us to house our asylum seekers now looks like being used by migrants sent there from other countries. Nor has Starmer made use of another obvious piece of leverage. Two weeks ago he renegotiated Britain's Brexit agreement, extending French fishing boats' access to UK waters without making it dependent on France putting a genuine effort into stopping the boats. Why didn't he at least say: You can fish in British waters only if you agree to take back every single migrant who makes it illegally across the Channel? As Kemi Badenoch said last week, every time Labour negotiates, Britain loses. But then the previous Tory government hardly set an example, either, in handing France nearly half a billion a year to pretend to tackle illegal migration. Truth is that we are all paying dearly for French border guards to stand around photographing the flotilla of migrant boats setting sail for Britain — and then again to feed and house the migrants once they arrive on our shores.
Telegraph
a day ago
- Politics
- Telegraph
The anti-migrant technology France is failing to use
France could end the small boats crisis through better use of hi-tech surveillance, US-style marine barriers and missions to intercept dinghies at sea, a former British border chief has said. Tony Smith, an ex-head of the Border Force, said a shift in tactics could plug gaps in the French approach that has led to a fall in the proportion of migrants being stopped from attempting to cross the English Channel to the UK. Only 184, or 13 per cent, of the 1,379 migrants who tried to make the journey on Saturday were prevented from doing so. The 1,195 people who successfully made it to the UK represented the biggest daily total for crossings this year and it was also the fourth highest on record. So far in 2025, 14,812 migrants have crossed the Channel to Britain, a rise of 42 per cent on this time last year. The figure is also the highest for the first five months of a year. So far this year, French officials have intercepted just 38 per cent of people suspected of attempting to make the crossing, down from 45 per cent in 2024, 46.9 per cent in 2023 and 42.4 per cent in 2022. Mr Smith, who helped halt a similar crisis in the early 2000s under Sir Tony Blair's Labour government, said: 'If we got political agreement with the French and brought in the private sector, we could solve all this.' Hi-tech surveillance Satellite imaging, supported by drones with cameras, is now so effective that even at night it can 'zoom in and see what people are having in their sandwiches on the deck of a boat,' said Mr Smith. He said the technology – which formed part of a £478 million Anglo-French deal signed by Rishi Sunak, the former prime minister, to combat migrant crossings – should be able to identify migrants movements and the deployment of boats by people smugglers. The UK also has such technology but cannot use it to help the French without their agreement because of territorial sovereignty, even though it could provide a first line of defence. By tracking migrants' movements, satellite imaging and drones could enable police officers and border officials to be deployed before people smugglers put their dinghies into the water, or at the time of launch, providing an opportunity to intercept them. 'If you get to them before they get into the water, you can disable the vessels before launch. You puncture them. There won't be anybody on board so you are not going to harm anyone. You could seize the vessel,' said Mr Smith. US-style marine barriers People smugglers have recently changed tactics by launching dinghies inland on rivers or waterways before sailing them to beaches to rendezvous with migrants, who are then picked up in shallow waters before setting off for the UK. They are what have become known as 'taxi' boats. In the Rio Grande river, which forms part of the border between the US and Mexico, American officials have deployed large barriers of miles of interlocked smooth buoys which are virtually impossible to climb over or swim under. Such barriers would also block dinghies. The French have deployed pontoons but they have failed to match the effectiveness of those designed, engineered and patented by Cochrane Global, an international company specialising in security barriers. Given that many of the French waterways affected are used by other commercial and leisure operators, any extra barriers would have to be designed with monitored exits and entrances to allow other boats through. They could even be deployed across the coastline to prevent migrant boats from leaving the shallow waters of beaches. Pushing back boats The French government has committed to amending its laws so that police can stop boats at sea for the first time. This will mean officers can use their own vessels in shallow waters to intercept overloaded dinghies. However, there is growing frustration that this plan is yet to be put into action. On Monday, Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, told MPs that she was urging France to complete its review into operational tactics to intercept boats at sea and implement any changes 'as swiftly as possible.' Mr Smith said: 'France has small patrol boats that can get into shallow waters. They could get alongside these boats while the migrants are trying to jump into them and literally push them back and say: 'You cannot get out to sea,' and stop the boats. Their biggest problem is getting them over the first waves and out to sea.' The use of hi-tech surveillance methods mentioned above, such as satellite imaging, would enable French authorities to track migrant vessels and help get their own boats into position for potential pushback operations. French officers have been facing a rising number of violent incidents from people smugglers and migrants while trying to stop them on beaches. However, French ministers are planning to restore the offence of an 'illegal stay' in the country, which would allow the police to arrest migrants and smugglers before they attempt a crossing. Currently, migrants who attempt to make the journey are only considered to have committed an offence when they launch a boat. Joint patrols and returns Mr Smith has consistently called for joint Anglo-French patrols since the small boat crossings grew into a major migration crisis for both governments. Under such proposals, French and British officers, operating jointly on sea and land, would return any migrants to France, even if they were picked up off the coast of England. However, such measures would require a new Anglo-French political agreement because it would otherwise be a breach of territorial sovereignty. To date, France has resisted UK demands for joint patrols for this very reason. But Mr Smith said such a deal could be achieved, citing the example of an agreement between the US and Canada after the 9/11 terror attack, which he helped craft when seconded to the Canadian border force. It instituted joint patrols, with each country's officers having powers of arrest within a defined boundary on either side of the border. 'It would need a readmission agreement with France. Ideally, you have an agreement where it doesn't matter where the migrants are picked up, even if it is within UK waters, you have joint patrols and they are returned to France,' he said. However, he admitted it was unlikely there would be the political will on France's part to agree to such a deal. Nonetheless, Sir Keir Starmer has indicated that Britain is prepared to negotiate a replacement for the Dublin agreement, a mutual returns deal that existed pre-Brexit between the UK and EU. Although limited in scope, it allowed the UK to return migrants to EU countries through which they had previously passed and where they should have claimed asylum.
