French police blunders may lead to half of the biggest international people smuggling ring sending migrants across the Channel escaping justice.
Twenty-two smugglers are being sentenced for crossings estimated to have netted them £5 million and put countless lives at risk.
But half of them failed to show up for their sentencing hearing. Several had been operating the enterprise from Britain.
Eight of them are feared to have fled the country, despite being placed on judicial supervision.
They may even be back arranging crossings and making millions from the illegal trade again.
Border Force and Home Office officials are said to be ‘gobsmacked’ by the revelation.
A total of 973 migrants in 17 small boats crossed the English Channel to the UK on Saturday
A two-year-old boy was ‘trampled to death’ on an overcrowded boat off the coast of France whilst attempting to cross the English Channel on Saturday
The details emerged during a sentencing hearing for a series of crossings from Calais to Normandy between 2020 and 2022.
Three of the gang, mostly Iraqi Kurds, got an adjournment until March 10 – spreading more fear they will flee.
One British Border Force source said: ‘This is shocking. It shows the French are not treating this seriously.
‘It’s a disgrace. These gang members will be back at it, making millions and putting lives at risk.’
The gang was smashed in July 2022 with arrests carried out in Britain, France, Holland, Belgium and Germany.
One even operated it from a French prison. It is estimated they organised 300 crossings. The defendants face ten years in prison.
Saturday has been called the busiest day of the year so far, according to Home Office figures, beating the previous record for 2024 – which was 882 people on 18 June
A group of people thought to be migrants are brought in to Dover, Kent, from the RNLI Dover Lifeboat following a small boat incident in the Channel on Saturday
It comes after nearly 1,000 migrants crossed the English Channel in small boats on Saturday, the busiest day of the year so far.
A total of 973 migrants in 17 small boats crossed the English Channel to the UK on Saturday – as four people died making the journey.
It has been called the busiest day of the year so far, according to Home Office figures, beating the previous record for 2024 – which was 882 people on 18 June.
It comes after a two-year-old boy was ‘trampled to death’ on an overcrowded boat off the coast of France whilst attempting to cross the English Channel on Saturday, the Prefect of Pas-de-Calais region confirmed.
The child was found on a small boat with nearly 90 migrants reportedly crammed onto it yesterday morning.
A woman and two men, all believed to be around 30 years old, also died on Saturday while crossing the Channel in a separate incident.
Fourteen other migrants picked up on board the rescue boat were brought back to France to be interviewed by the border police and a 17-year-old was taken to a hospital in the port city of Boulogne-sur-Mer after suffering from burns to his legs.
Boulogne-sur-Mer prosecutor Guirec Le Bras, said the child, who appeared to have been crushed in a jostling on the boat, was born in Germany from a 24-year-old Somalian mother.
In a separate incident, Billant said rescuers found the three migrants in the bottom of a boat and saved several others that fell overboard.
It is believed engine failures caused panic among the 83 passengers crammed onto the small boat, which resulted in a deadly stampede.
The migrants rescued on Saturday were from Eritrea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iran, Ethiopia, Libya, Syria, Egypt, Kuwait and Iraq, Billant added.
Posting on X about the ‘terrible tragedy’, French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau said that ‘the smugglers have the blood of these people on their hands’.
He added that his newly-appointed government will ‘intensify the fight against these mafias who make money from these deadly crossings.’
France’s prime minister Michel Barnier said the country needs a stricter immigration policy, claiming he would be ‘ruthless’ with people traffickers who profit from human misery.
Writing on X, UK Home Secretary Yvette Cooper described the deaths as appalling’ and said criminal gangs ‘do not care if people live or die – this is a terrible trade in lives’.
‘I have been in touch with the French interior minister Bruno Retailleau today,’ she continued.
The fatal incident came after the Home Office confirmed that 395 migrants arrived in the UK crossed the English Channel on Friday in the first arrivals in five days
A woman and two men, all believed to be around 30 years old, also died on Saturday while crossing the Channel in a separate incident
‘We met in Italy at G7 this week to discuss our determination to increase cooperation and law enforcement.
‘We will pursue and dismantle criminal gangs who undermine border security and put so many lives at risk.’
Cooper has pledged an immediate £75 million investment in border security, with funding made available to the National Crime Agency to pay for covert operation equipment to disrupt people smugglers.
The Home Office said this would support the delivery of criminal investigations and disruption operations in the UK, across Europe and in upstream countries.
Retailleau responded: ‘Today several people died trying to cross the Channel.
‘A child was trampled to death in a boat. A terrible tragedy that must make us all aware of the tragedy that is unfolding.
‘The people smugglers have the blood of these people on their hands.
‘Our government will intensify the fight against these mafias who are getting rich by organizing these crossings of death.’
The latest tragedies mean that a total of 51 people have died attempting to make the perilous journey across the Channel this year.
The figure for 2023 is reportedly 12.
On Friday, after bad weather had halted crossings for four days, a total of 395 people made the risky journey across the Channel in seven boats.
It means a total of 25,639 migrants have arrived on small boats this year so far, compared to to 25,330 by the same time last year and 33,611 in 2022.
Saturday’s deaths come as a series of shipwrecks made 2024 the deadliest in recent years on the English Channel.
Last month, 12 people died after a boat carrying migrants ripped apart while crossing from France to Britain.
About two weeks later, eight migrants died in a similar crossing attempt.
Following Saturday’s disaster, Dover MP Mike Tapp said: ‘This is another tragedy. We are making progress with setting up the necessary structures and partnerships to take on the smuggling gangs.
‘There is no doubt to me that working with our French counterparts and the EU is essential to making this route unviable for the evil smuggling gangs.’
A Home Office spokesman said: ‘We all want to end dangerous small boat crossings, which threaten lives and undermine our border security.
‘As we have seen with so many recent devastating tragedies in the Channel, the people-smuggling gangs do not care if the vulnerable people they exploit live or die, as long as they pay.
‘We will stop at nothing to dismantle their business models and bring them to justice.
‘We are making progress, bolstering our personnel numbers in the UK and abroad.
‘Our new Border Security Command will strengthen our global partnerships and enhance our efforts to investigate, arrest and prosecute these evil criminals.’
This week, the UK and other G7 nations agreed an anti-smuggling action plan designed to boost co-operation.
The Home Office said this included joint investigations and intelligence-sharing in a bid to target criminal smuggling routes.
The action plan also detailed ‘working collaboratively’ with social media companies to monitor the internet and different platforms to prevent them being used to enable migrant smuggling and people trafficking.
This included calling on social media companies ‘to do more to respond to online content that advertises migrant smuggling services’.
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