‘Disgrace!’ — UK Sees Record 1,300 Illegal Boat Migrants Land in One Day

A group of people thought to be migrants are brought in to Dover, Kent, from a Border Forc
Gareth Fuller/PA Images via Getty Images
Kurt Zindulka

A new record was set for daily crossings of the English Channel on Monday, with nearly 1,300 illegal migrants being brought ashore in just one day.

According to the Ministry of Defence, some 1,295 illegal boat migrants crosse the Channel in small rubber boats from the beaches of France, a single day record and over four times the number that landed in Britain during the entire year of 2018 when 297 made the journey.

The latest crossings take the total for the month to 6,168, up from 3,683 in the month of July, according to calculations from the BBC.

So far this year, at least 22,560 illegal aliens have crossed the English Channel, compared to 12,500 at this point last year, when a total of 28,526 reached the UK.

BBC reporter Simon Jones, who tracks the migrant crisis for the publicly funded broadcaster, said that while he witnessed some families being brought ashore at the Port of Dover, he admitted that “the vast majority arriving were young men.”

Brexit leader Nigel Farage branded the record day for illegal arrivals a “disgrace,” saying: “So, 1295 people illegally crossed the Channel yesterday. It is a new record. Nearly all young men, many from Albania.

“This is a disgrace.”

Commenting on the growing crisis on the Monday evening broadcast of his GB News primetime show, Mr Farage said that the blame lies with the British government.

It is becoming increasingly “difficult for the French police” to cover the vast amount of beaches from which the people smuggling gangs are setting off boats, Mr Farage said, claiming that the area of operation has expanded to some 60 miles of the coastal region.

“If the french authorities are going to police 60 miles plus of French beach, they’d need ten or 20,000 troops on the beaches, it is now virtually impossible,” he said.

“The problem isn’t the French. Let’s stop blaming everybody else, the problem is us, we didn’t complete Brexit, we didn’t get a proper Brexit, we haven’t got back control of our borders.”

Mr Farage, and others, have called on the government that will succeed Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s administration to remove Britain from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) which still has jurisdiction to block deportation flights from Britain despite Brexit, as the court is technically outside of the European Union even though it is widely seen as closely aligned with the EU, sharing the same flag, anthem, and building complex in Strasbourg, France.

In June, the ECHR made a controversial, last-minute intervention to stop the British government from deporting illegals to the East African nation of Rwanda, which signed a deal earlier this year to hold migrants from processing while their asylum claims are processed. The scheme, negotiated by Home Secretary Priti Patel has been put on hold until a high court review of the legality of the plan is held.

With the Rwanda plan in doubt and the Royal Navy reportedly backing away from its role in the Channel, the UK has been left with little to deter further illegal crossings of the waterway, which are on pace to hit 60,000 by the end of the year.

Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka

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