Channel migrant crisis hits new milestone as anger over German ‘failures’ grows | Policy

More migrants have crossed the Channel in small boats so far this year than in all of 2023, it found.

Around 300 are believed to have arrived in the UK on Friday.

Home Office figures showed 509 people made the journey on 11 boats on Thursday, bringing the provisional total for 2024 to date to 29,154.

This would mean that yesterday’s arrivals surpassed the annual total of 29,437 who crossed the English Channel last year.

It is already the deadliest year on record in the English Channel, with at least 56 deaths.

Tory leadership candidate Robert Jenrick said: “Labour’s plans to ‘crush the gangs’ are in disarray after their first contact with reality.

“They abandoned, not consolidated, the scheme in Rwanda and are now powerless to stop the boats.

“Britain is now at the mercy of smuggling gangs – and the British public will pay the price with more asylum hotels and dangerous people on our streets.”

The BBC on Friday revealed how the German city of Essen, just four hours from Calais, has become a key hub for smugglers who orchestrate their nefarious trade.

Germany is a key transit country for smugglers bringing barges and engines to the French coast, with networks known to use warehouses for their equipment.

Thousands of migrants also pass through the country, with organized crime gangs using safe houses near Bonn, Cologne, Frankfurt, Essen, Dusseldorf, Bochum and Dortmund.

The criminals admitted to using several warehouses in Essen, sometimes providing “bait” to the German police.

Thus, the gangsters allow the authorities to seize boats and equipment – but not enough to disrupt their businesses.

Smugglers also boasted undercover BBC reporter that they could get boats and equipment into northern France within four hours, meaning they are comfortable using the motorway networks to cross the border.

They said a boat, motor and 60 life jackets would cost £12,500 if they organized a crossing themselves.

And they suggested that a “new crossing point” is not being monitored as much by French police.

A former Home Office official said: “The German government is among the most useless in stopping the boats. Most of the boat equipment goes through Germany and they have done almost nothing to stop the smuggling gangs.”

Robert Bates, director of research at the Center for Migration Control, told the Daily Express: “At every step of the operation, organized crime is two or three steps ahead of the authorities.

“Whether it’s the use of agents to process migrants’ cash payments, the clandestine transport of ships from Turkey, discreetly stored in German warehouses and then driven to the French coast, or the highly secretive means by which gangs communicate with . customers, the take home message is that Yvette Cooper and Keir Starmer fails.

“And that’s because they misdiagnosed the problem.

“These gangs only charge £1,660 and have lots of potential customers. Even if mainland authorities manage to dump a few boats or confiscate a few engines, that simply means the gangs will cram a few more migrants onto those undetected boats.

“Contractors are frankly smarter and more determined than our politicians. Until we have a government that actually wants to solve the problem, rather than producing platitudes to please the Refugee Council and left-wing lawyers, then the gangs will continue to amass small fortunes.”

Mr. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said in August that he wanted more joint British-German operations to stop migrant boats reaching northern France.

Sir Keir said a new pact between London and Berlin could strengthen data and intelligence sharing and step up joint operations.

Charities working in France have identified vehicles with Belgian, German and Dutch registration numbers at a notorious migrant camp near Dunkirk.

Researchers from the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime said: “Contractors will rent a property in these cities and fill it with migrants or use an intermediary who can provide a property.

“Some migrants, however, choose to stay closer to coastal areas, often in hotels that are known to host almost exclusively low-level migrants, refugees and traffickers during the summer months when weather conditions are more conducive to crossing.

“These hotels are among the cheaper options on offer and in some cases appear to offer additional services such as sending migrants’ luggage to the UK on arrival.

“They also act as recruitment centers for smugglers, and some hotels offer discounted accommodation for the smugglers’ clients.”