Border Force scrambles to save migrants in Channel

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Rescue operation carried out after flimsy dinghy deflates, pitching 50 people into rough seas



Fifty migrants had to be rescued from the Channel after they were pitched into sea when their flimsy dinghy deflated on Monday.

The Border Force catamaran Ranger and a French navy vessel that had been shadowing the dinghy helped pull the migrants from the sea in mid-Channel.

Witnesses said the boat carrying the 50 migrants – understood to have included women – deflated in the rough seas. “They should not have been trying to cross today. It is far too rough,” one witnesse said.

The 50 rescued people were brought back to Dover to be treated for any injuries or hypothermia as a result of being plunged into the water.

On Friday, witnesses described how another dinghy was “seconds from sinking” in the shipping lane in the middle of the Channel.

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Call me odd but I thought the job of "Border Force" was to keep people out, not help bring them in?

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French waters, they should have been returned to France!

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Migrants think Britain is an ‘El Dorado’, says Calais mayor



Channel migrants think of Britain as an “Eldorado” because of its lax approach to illegal workers, French politicians and officials have claimed.

Natacha Bouchart, the mayor of Calais, said Britain was “hypocritical” in criticising France over the surge in migrants when illegal migrants were attracted to Britain by the prospect of black market work.

They called for a summit with Britain to work out how to end the Channel crossings which saw at least 12 migrants die on Tuesday when their dinghy, crammed with some 65 people, broke up and sank three miles off the French coast.

Ten of the 12 dead were women including one who was pregnant and six were “minors”. Most are thought to be from Eritrea. Only eight of the 65 were wearing lifejackets.

Gerald Darmanin, the French interior minister, who has also criticised the UK’s lax labour laws for fuelling the crossings, called for a new treaty that would allow migrants to claim asylum in the UK from the EU.

“We’re suffering from this hypocrisy,” said Ms Bouchart, referring to labour legislation in England and the existence of numerous British smugglers.

“At some point, we’re going to have to have a showdown with this government” to avoid “in fifty years’ time (being) still at the same level, with people wanting to go to England because it continues to be an El Dorado,” she added.

Didier Leschi, Director of the French Office of Immigration and Integration (Ofii), said: “The issue for England is to have an internal system that appears to be an El Dorado - and probably wrongly so - since it’s a country where you can work very easily without having a residence permit.”

El Dorado is a mythical city or country of riches that is said to be located in South America. The name comes from the Spanish phrase “el dorado”, which translates to “the golden”.

The mayor of Wimereux, a French coastal town where migrants were filmed setting off for the UK from the beach a day after the tragedy, pleaded for French and British officials to do more to limit the number of migrants attempting the often perilous journey.

“Unfortunately, every day is like this for us. The smugglers — a criminal network — continue with insistence to send people to their deaths in the Channel. It really is unacceptable, scandalous. And it is high time that a lasting solution is found with Britain,” said Mayor Jean-Luc Dubaële.

“Let’s ask ourselves the question: Why do they want to go to Britain? Because something is drawing them there,” he said. “They can ask for asylum in France. (But) none ask for the right to asylum in France. They all want to go to Britain. So it is high time that we sit around a table with the new British government.”

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'Life here is much more easy'



As cabinet ministers and law enforcement teams were meeting to discuss ways to enact the prime minister's pledge to "smash the gangs", in a flat in Manchester Hassan was bathing a kitten he's adopted since being granted asylum in Britain.

The 26-year-old knows all about the smuggling gangs that bring people over in small boats across the Channel from France.

He paid a gang around 2,000 euros (£1,690) to make the journey to the UK from Dunkirk four years ago.

He says there are "thousands" of people willing to take the money of people prepared to pay to get in a boat. Back home in Kurdistan he says they have offices and don't need to advertise what they do because "everybody knows who they are". Their business is based on recommendations and word of mouth.

He says there are "plenty" of gangs, adding "they all have contact with each other". And he says he understands why offering people like him a future in the UK is such big business.

"Life here is much more easy than the other countries. And you can find a beautiful life in here and work", he says, adding "even the government is helping the refugees here much better than the other countries".

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Taxpayer pays for new clothes and shoes for every Channel migrant



The taxpayer is providing new clothes and shoes to illegal Channel migrants at a cost of more than £3,000 a day, The Telegraph can reveal.

Men, women and children arriving at Dover have been handed the free clothes – including puffer coats, hats and gloves in winter and flip-flops in summer – at a total cost of almost £4 million over the past three years.

They are kept in a quayside store house, said by one former official to be as big as a Matalan or M&S store, with changing rooms to try the clothes on.

The Home Office stocks thousands of different sizes and shapes to replace all the migrants’ clothing, which it says is necessary because they are often soaked through with sea water and “occasionally” splashed with fuel, posing a health and safety risk.

Some are also offered free mobile phones to ensure that “ongoing contact” with immigration officials can be maintained, although the Home Office said this was rare and it could provide no figures on these costs.

The figures have prompted calls for migrants to be required to reimburse the taxpayer if they are subsequently granted the right to remain in the UK as a refugee. About 66 per cent of Channel migrants in the year to September 2024 were granted asylum.

Tony Smith, a former director general of Border Force, said: “If they are allowed to stay, then they are going to be able to work and earn money. To me, that’s a chargeable deduction on our investment in them like universities, where you have to borrow £30,000 to get your child in to study.”

The new clothes cost the taxpayer £3,733,145 for 2022-23 and the first 10 months of 2024, equivalent to £3,624 a day for the 105,853 migrants who crossed the Channel during that period. It works out at £35.27 per migrant.

In 2022, the record year for crossings when 45,755 migrants reached the UK in small boats, the clothing cost the Home Office £2,047,756.77. In 2023, when crossings fell to 29,437 migrants, the bill dropped to £959,327.66 and for the first 10 months of 2024, it was £726,062.79.

It is understood the migrants are allowed to keep their old clothes, which are stored while the migrants are processed at the Manston reception centre in Kent.

Each migrant who arrives first hands back their life jacket, then has to point on a board to the number for their age and a flag for their nationality. They are checked by medics before going to the clothing store, where they check they have the correct fitting clothes in a changing room. They are then transferred to Manston.

In its FoI response, the Home Office said: “They are provided with a basic clothing pack similar to those issued via the Prison Service, consisting of underwear, socks, T-shirt, trousers/jogging bottoms, sweatshirt and weather-appropriate footwear such as flip-flops/sliders, plimsolls or trainers.

“In colder weather, a coat, hat and gloves are included in the clothing pack. Children are also provided with age and weather-appropriate clothing packs, and – where necessary – nappies are also provided for babies.”

Critics demanded that the costly practice stop, and the Government should use the voluntary and charity sector to provide second-hand clothes instead of the taxpayer picking up the bill.

Richard Tice, the deputy leader of Reform UK, said: “The taxpayer should not be footing any new clothing bill.

“If Care for Calais and other Leftie luvvies care so much, they can source clothing from their donations.

“Hard-working British taxpayers are sick and tired of being ripped off by these illegal arrivals.”

Alp Mehmet, the chairman of Migration Watch, said: “There seems to be no end to the Government’s largesse with taxpayers’ money. You arrive illegally, get dried off, re-clothed and put up in comfort to await the inevitable good news that you can stay for good.

“That’s why record numbers will continue to come, and ‘smashing the gangs’ is a pipe dream.”