The number of migrants that have landed in Britain so far this year is now more than three times the total that arrived by small boat throughout the whole of 2020.
Another 886 asylum seekers arrived on the Kent coast on Saturday, after packing a series of dinghies to make the dangerous Channel crossing. Among them was a mother clutching her newborn baby, and at least 10 children.
Satuday’s arrivals pushed the total number to beyond 25,700 migrants for 2021 so far. The tally for the whole of last year was just 8,469.
The record number of landings intensifies the growing pressure on Home Secretary Priti Patel, who has continuously stressed she will crack down on people smuggling gangs, despite the record number of migrants still rocketing.
A variety of outlandish schemes have been floated by the Home Secretary – including even sending them to a volcanic island – but little has been done beyond words.
The growing crisis took a surprising turn over the weekend when she said the Home Office was ‘not fit for purpose’. That prompted disgruntled staff to brief she was ‘a moron’ and was ‘self-serving’ and ‘erratic’.
Pressure too grows on Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who has been warned by senior Tories that the worsening crisis could inspire the rise of a UKIP style party, with a particular focus on migrants.
A task force has now been set up by Mr Johnson to draw up new strategies. The group, expected to be chaired by Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Steve Barclay, is said to be considering housing asylum seekers in army barracks rather than hotels – something that already happens.
Other tactics are said to include ‘offhshoring’ migrants to third countries or cutting the benefits they recieve upon arrival.
This morning business minister Paul Scully complained that agreements with Paris have not been ‘effected’ as the backlash from Tories gathered pace.
The numbers of migrants arriving in the UK by boat has now tripled from last year’s numbers up to over 25,700
Migrants huddle together on the beach at Dungeness yesterday after three crammed boats arrived on the shoreline
A record 4,000 arrivals have made the perilous crossing this month, including vulnerable children, and relations with France have been increasingly strained.
Despite the UK pledging £50million to bolster patrols and other counter-measures the numbers show little sign of abating.
It has seen the Home Secretary become the target of frustration from her own MPs.
A task force set up by Boris Johnson to draw up a new strategy is said to be looking at housing asylum seekers in army barracks rather than hotels – something that already happens.
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Steve Barclay has been told to drive policies across government, and is expected to chair the first meeting of the group early this week.
The initiative will consider the accommodation idea, the possibility of cutting benefits, if return agreements can be strengthened as well as ‘offshoring’ to third countries while claims are processed, according to the Daily Telegraph.
Labour has accused Home Secretary Priti Patel of ‘comprehensively failing’ to stem the flow.
Mr Scully told Sky News: ‘We’ve made an agreement with France which, unfortunately, is not being effected well enough at the moment, and that’s what we need to go back and do.’
A record 4,000 arrivals have made the perilous crossing this month, including vulnerable children, and relations with France have been increasingly strained (pictured, arrivals at Dover last week)
Home Secretary Priti Patel has been the target of increasing frustration from her own MPs over the increasing numbers
Business minister Paul Scully complained that agreements with Paris have not been ‘effected’ as the backlash from Tories gathered pace
Mr Scully continued: ‘One of the things we’ve got to do is stop the pull factors, we’ve got to stop the reason why people are travelling through safe countries, through France, to come to the UK.
‘Actually, we’ve got to make sure they are treated well in France, that in the first place, that they are claiming asylum – that’s what the rules are, that’s what the laws are.’
He added: ‘While they (migrants) can see there is a pathway across the Channel because the border isn’t being enforced well enough on the land side, on the French side, and while we’re not allowed to treat illegal immigrants differently from legal immigrants, then those pull factors remain – that’s what we’re tackling and trying to tackle at full speed.’
Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi said it was important to ‘kill the business model’ to stem the migrant crisis.
Asked what people in Calais should do if they are seeking asylum in the UK, Mr Zahawi told LBC: ‘What will happen, hopefully, is you kill the business model. You end the business model. Because, basically, at the moment if they think that once they arrive on these shores the legal system can be used to allow them to stay here, then they will keep doing it.
‘If the message gets out, very quickly by the way, and I’ve already seen it on the issue around … what the Belarussian government were doing to weaponise migration against Poland and other countries.
‘Once the message gets out that those people can’t get through, then they very quickly stop… doing that.’
In a sign of the difficulty in coping with the numbers of arrivals, Channel migrants are being bussed 500 miles to Scotland for processing after arriving on beaches in Kent as the system struggles under a record number of crossings.
Dozens have taken the eight-hour journey to Dungavel immigration detention centre in Strathaven, South Lanarkshire in the last few weeks, according to a pressure group.
Until now, migrants have been processed in Home Office short-term holding facilities an hour or two from Dover.
Dungavel is an immigration removal centre, which is usually used to hold failed asylum seekers prior to deportation. There are eight others in the UK, seven in England and one in Northern Ireland.
Kate Alexander, director of Scottish Detainee Visitors, told The Guardian: ‘When I visited Dungavel on 14 October, I learnt that around 50 people who had crossed the Channel in small boats had been brought there for ”processing”.
‘Staff said this was the second time it had happened in a month, but not before that.’
Dozens have taken the eight-hour journey to Dungavel immigration detention centre in Strathaven, South Lanarkshire (pictured) in the last few weeks, according to a pressure group
The Home Office said: ‘The British public have had enough of seeing people die in the Channel while ruthless criminal gangs profit from their misery and our new plan for immigration will fix the broken system which encourages migrants to make this lethal journey.
‘People should claim asylum in the first safe country they reach – rather than making dangerous journeys to the UK.
‘That is why we will have rules in place to make asylum claims inadmissible where people have travelled through or have a connection to safe countries.’
It came as a minister warned French officials were not enforcing their land border ‘well enough’ to prevent people crossing the Channel.
French officials are not enforcing their land border ‘well enough’ to prevent migrants from crossing the Channel, a minister has argued.
A newborn baby clutching its mother’s chest was among 200 migrants who sailed ashore along the Kent coastline yesterday.
Video footage showed the aftermath of three boats landing on the shoreline near Dungeness, with around 65 exhausted people crammed onto each one.
Witnesses described coaches filled mostly with men being led away from the shingle beach by Border Force officials.
The Home Office still has not released figures for last Tuesday which is expected to be more than 1,000 and a potential record breaker.
Saturday’s high tally has only ever been eclipsed when 1,185 migrants arrived in 33 boats on November 11.
The first group of around 30 people were brought in by the RNLI’s Dover Lifeboat under the cover of darkness shortly before 4am on Saturday.
Arrivals to Dover Marina, Kent continued around 8am when Border Force cutter Speedwell brought around 20 migrants in with a huge black RHIB in tow.
More than 50 were on board Hunter around an hour later – with dozens more ferried in on board smaller Border Force RHIBs.
Just one of the three boats – each estimated to have been crammed with about 65 people – which landed in Kent yesterday.
One of Border Force’s biggest vessels Valiant was also seen bringing a large group in.
Those on board were mainly men of Middle Eastern appearance wearing thick winter coats, woolly hats and orange lifejackets huddling red blankets for warmth.
They were escorted up the gangway for processing by Immigration Enforcement.
Border Force’s huge catamaran Hurricane was also seen to rescue around 50 migrants whose large dinghy had drifted towards Folkestone around noon.
Around 45 migrants also managed to land their grey dinghy on the beach at Dungeness, Kent and were brought up the shingle by police officers.
Crossings continued well into the evening in pitch black darkness.
French authorities also prevented 466 migrants from making the perilous journey in 14 events – meaning more than 1,300 people were attempted the crossing throughout the day.
No migrants attempted the crossing on Sunday due to windy conditions which made the Channel extremely choppy.
Paul Fenney, 40, from Folkestone, Kent, was enjoying a family walk when he saw the latest landings.
Mr Fenney said: ‘I saw three ambulances, three coaches and about 40 police and RNLI boats.
‘There was one coach already full and on the back it said it was an 87-seater and the coach in front had about ten people on it, and when we walked to the sea there were about 90 there.
‘There were three boats and they were obviously overloaded. There was a newborn baby that was rushed away with female paramedics and its mother.
‘We saw ten little lads, they looked like they were on their own. They were walking in a group with Border Force people.
‘The majority were men – I only saw that one lady with the very small baby clutched to her chest.’
More than 24,700 migrants have arrived in the UK so far this year.
The news comes amid reports that some asylum seekers are getting tattoos of Jesus and cruxifixes as evidence they have converted to Christianity and cannot be returned to the Middle East on religious grounds.
Immigration appeal judgments over the last five years show that over 20 asylum claimants have tattoos connected to Christianity, atheism and homosexuality, the Sunday Telegraph reports.
In each of these cases, the tattoos were used to argue the risk individuals face if returned to their Muslim home countries, many of which deem leaving the Islamic faith and being gay as criminal offences.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson is facing increasing pressure from his own party to adopt a tougher stance on migrants crossing the channel, as a poll showed 77 per cent of Tory voters felt the Government’s approach was ‘too soft’.
Senior party figures warned Mr Johnson that a shift to the political centre would ‘open up a gap’ on the PM’s right flank, leaving space for another party which could cost the Tories a majority at a future election.
Shameless gangs shoot videos of fake Channel crossings to tout for business: SUE REID investigates how migrant traffickers have gained the upper hand in Dunkirk
By SUE REID
His face obscured by a Covid mask, the small man stands among throngs of migrants near a dense forest in Dunkirk.
He is 30 years old and watches quietly as the French police dismantle a nearby shanty camp where thousands have waited this year to get on boats from northern French beaches to Britain.
‘It is easy for these people to reach the UK,’ he boasts to me in perfect English, even though he is an Iraqi Kurd. ‘All you need is money. The more you have, the easier it is.
‘The police can pull down the camps, but the migrants will hide in the forest and then come out to catch boats across the sea.’
The shadowy figure is a people trafficker who spoke to me last week on condition of anonymity.
A migrant casually puffs a cigarette after a safe crossing – but really he’s a trafficker actor in a video shot in France to advertise smuggling gangs
Our conversation took place as the Mail established that rival people smuggling gangs are posting videos online to compete for business – using actors to play migrants ‘crossing’ to the UK.
The man in the Covid mask is a key player in one of Dunkirk’s ten gangs which, with ruthless efficiency enforced by guns, organise the never-ending migrant flow to the UK’s south coast.
He owns a Dunkirk restaurant and has settled in France. But he travels to the UK regularly, he says, to see his extended family in London where he came to live at 18 as an asylum seeker.
‘What is wrong with us sending migrants going to the UK?’ he asks me boldly. ‘Britain needs more workers and we Iraqi Kurds work hard.’
Traffickers have gained the upper hand here. They run rings around the French police and are not afraid of anyone. Which is why the man I met last Thursday was prepared to speak to me so openly even though I am a journalist.
Yet they are dangerous characters. They push migrants who dither on to boats at gunpoint. Their gangs fight each other over the control of the boat crossings which make them millions.
They are at the root of what Home Secretary Priti Patel last week admitted is a ‘migration crisis’.
One that a prominent but anonymous Tory party donor warned this weekend could destroy the Government, as a new poll showed 77 per cent of Tory voters say its approach is too soft.
The traffickers know there is insatiable demand for passages on their boats. They are pushing at an open door. On Friday, the former chief immigration officer for UK Border Force, Kevin Saunders, explained that migrants ‘know they’ve won the jackpot’ when they reach Britain.
‘The biggest draw is these people know everything in the United Kingdom is free, they are going to get education, medical treatment, money, accommodation.’
What’s more, he added, they ‘know that they’re not going to be removed, this is why they destroy all their documentation (in the Channel in sight of Dover)’.
The traffickers compete violently for customers to smuggle across the world, slip into Europe, and bring to Dunkirk beaches from where 24,000 – hundreds this weekend alone – have embarked this year.
A video showing migrants how easy it is to sail to the UK unchallenged is on the social media site TikTok. Incredibly, it was made by traffickers to ramp up their trade.
With supreme confidence, six men – one puffing casually on a cigarette – step out of a people smugglers’ dinghy on to a beach, disappearing along a sea wall for a new life in Britain.
The video is accompanied by a jaunty soundtrack of a popular Kurdish song which includes the lyrics: ‘We are here, we did not die.’
That, at least, is the happy scenario the video-makers want those watching it to believe. In fact, the film was faked. It was shot not on the Kent coast but on the outskirts of Dunkirk, with its distinctive skyline of three large liquefied natural gas storage tanks near a tall lighthouse.
And the men in the video who step out of the inflatable, left behind bobbing on the sea, are trafficker actors – not migrants reaching the UK.
‘The smugglers made it as a “come-on” advertisement to migrants,’ explains an immigration expert who advises the Government.
‘It sends a message that it is easy to cross the Channel, disappear into the UK, and the sea journey is safe.’
Tellingly, the two-tone grey dinghy in the video has a colour and design which link it to a Dunkirk-based Kurdish Iraqi smuggling gang that uses it routinely for crossings. The inflatable is custom-made at a Turkish factory and then transported across Europe, via Germany, to the beaches of France for migrants to board.
Earlier this year, we found 18 identically designed inflatables – both medium and mega-sized – in the ‘dinghy graveyard’, a Kent government warehouse where migrants’ discarded vessels are piled high.
A mega-boat with the same two-tone colour scheme was also pictured being towed into Dover harbour by the Border Force vessel Hurricane after a mass Channel rescue this summer.
Our source explains: ‘The grey inflatable has become the traffickers’ boat of choice. This design is being bought in bulk by smuggling gangs. It is deliberately manufactured without logos or identifying insignia to make it tricky to trace back to the Turkish factory where it is built.
‘We fear Iraqi Kurdish traffickers now have their own factory in Turkey churning out these basic and anonymised grey boats.’
It is predicted that sea arrivals by the end of the year will hit far more than 30,000.
Gendarmerie captain Laurent Martin de Morestal, overseeing beach patrols in northern France this summer, says his officers are run ragged because of the sheer number of boats leaving in mass flotillas.
‘We have 24-hour, seven day a week surveillance. There are multiple departure attempts every two miles. We will stop one, two, three, four – but if we are busy elsewhere, the fifth or sixth will leave.’
France’s interior minister Gerald Darmanin says people smugglers have seized control of his country’s northern beaches, creating a migration ‘phenomenon’.
This autumn, the numbers waiting in Dunkirk have grown with the arrival of Afghans fleeing the Taliban and other nationalities from the Belarus-Poland border.
Meanwhile, Lucy Moreton, head of the Immigration Services Union, has warned criminals (or those hoping to harm us) are evading Border Force sea and land patrols to get into the UK undetected.
‘Since we don’t catch them, the reason they don’t want to be collected by us is speculative. But it is most likely they have a past criminal record, either in the UK, in Europe or their home countries, that they don’t want us to know,’ she says.
In July, the Mail saw a large group arrive near Kent’s Dungeness power station after being shepherded to safety by an RNLI lifeboat. They had travelled from France in a black mega-inflatable abandoned on the shore after they had disembarked.
Tellingly, the vessel had a large orange guard on its outboard propeller, a feature that meant it had been specifically designed by the traffickers for a secret beach landing, according to an immigration official.
‘These migrants did not expect – or want – to be found by border force or a lifeboat,’ he says.
‘The guard was put on to allow an undamaged and undetected landing on what the traffickers know will be a stony beach in Kent. They don’t want to be caught up in the asylum system for years.’
The same week, a group – thought to be Iraqi Kurds – arrived on an inflatable at Kingsdown beach near the White Cliffs of Dover. They hid in a village churchyard before reaching the garden of a house.
When the owner found them, they asked him for bottled water and a charging point for their mobile phones.
A villager told us: ‘They also asked to sleep in the owner’s garden overnight. They said they were going to be picked up by a car the next day to be taken to Manchester.
‘He alerted Border Force who came and took them away.’
Migrant escapees near Folkestone, Kent, have been spotted catching buses and walking along suburban streets towards the train station with fast direct routes to London.
One afternoon the Mail tracked four migrants who had beached along the coast in Dover and ran off, discarding their boat. An hour later, we found them walking briskly up the A2 above the port towards a blue Ford parked beside a roundabout.
Its bearded driver, in his early 40s, was standing by it using a mobile phone. When he spotted us, he immediately drove off speedily.
The four migrants running towards him, also holding mobile phones, disappeared into nearby cornfields. We photographed the Ford and its registration number, handing both to Kent police.
A DVLA database check revealed that it had originally been grey. The car had either been resprayed or the registration plates were fake.
And what of the TikTok video found by the Mail with its trafficker actors? British immigration intelligence officers are searching for the gang that posted it and the origins of the grey two-tone inflatable shown on the seashore.
A Home Office spokesman condemned the clip: ‘To promote or glamorise these crossings is disgraceful. It encourages people to leave safe countries and put their lives at risk.’
Miss Patel has written to TikTok, warning the company to remove ‘unacceptable’ videos promoting the ‘deadly activity’ of Channel crossings.
And that will not please the dark-haired Iraqi Kurd trafficker who boasted to me in Dunkirk how easily migrants sail into Britain.