Channel Migrants ‘Refused to be Rescued’ by French Authorities, Carried on to England

TOPSHOT - This aerial picture taken on September 16, 2023, from a police aircraft belongin
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Oliver JJ Lane

A number of overladen migrant boats got into trouble in the English Channel at the weekend, but some refused to be rescued, turning the Coast Guard away and insisting on carrying on to Britain, despite the risk.

615 boat migrants arrived on England’s southern coast the last day of Suella Braverman being Home Secretary — rubbishing any hope she may have had of claiming a legacy on “stopping the boats” — and some of these arrived after getting into trouble at sea but refusing to be taken back to France. The ongoing saga of French authorities being in a position to turn back people trafficker boats intending to flout laws and norms on international travel but refusing to do so is a further blow to Braverman’s tough talk-only legacy as the United Kingdom has given millions of pounds to France to stop migrant crossings but got close to nothing in return for it.

As revealed in a statement by the French Maritime Prefect of the English Channel, the office of a French Rear Admiral with policing authority over France’s northern territorial waters, French coastguard boats had a busy weekend but were unwilling to bring back migrants to France who refused to be helped when in distress. Their communication stated: “during this rescue operation, some migrants managed to restart their engine and refused to be rescued.”

Addressing the idea that the authority could have simply discharged the responsibility delegated to it by British taxpayers, who give the French government tens of millions of pounds to police its own borders, the Prefecture insisted it was dangerous to even try. They continued: “Given the risks faced by migrants in the event of restrictive actions to force them to embark on State rescue vehicles (fall at sea, thermal shock, various trauma) it was decided to let them continue their journey.” The migrant dinghy was monitored for the rest of its journey, they said.

Not that being on the English Channel in a small, overloaded, unseaworthy rubber boat isn’t without risks of its own. In its boilerplate warning appended to the end of the statement, France warned those who might be listening that: “The prefect… warns anyone who plans to cross the Channel about the risks involved. This sea area is one of the busiest in the world, with more than 400 commercial ships passing through it every day, and the weather conditions are often difficult… so it is a particularly dangerous sector.”

The risk to the migrant boat which got into trouble but refused aid is not merely theoretical. There have been several fatalities involving unseaworthy migrant boats in the Channel, and last week the British government ordered an independent inquiry into the deaths of 27 people in one sinking in 2021.

The revelation that once again migrants had refused to be given help after suffering an engine failure mid-Channel, and that a considerable number of migrants had made it to England’s southern shores to join the ever-growing number of ‘irregular’ migrants — the term ‘illegal’ now having fallen out of favour — who arrive every year came on the last day in power for erstwhile Home Secretary Suella Braverman. The post brought with it responsibility for migration to the United Kingdom, but despite time in office characterised by tough rhetoric — and the political cost of weathering pushback from the left for talking tough — no real progress was actually made, and migration both legal and illegal continues to run at record-high levels.

One totem of the Conservative Party’s failed attempts to control boat migrants is the money it has paid to France to patrol its own borders. As reported by Politico the UK is due to send France £470 million to stop Channel boats until 2026 and while some of that money has been spent on useful equipment like “helicopters, cars, motorbikes, e-scooters and quad bike”, there are questions over how some of  the rest was deployed.

Per the claims, British money was also spent buying French police “microwaves, vacuum cleaners for cars, and car adapters for charging devices”, and even buying vehicles and drones for a French police unit on the Italian border, 400 miles away from the English Channel.

Despite the hefty spend on equipment, the actual effectiveness of France’s efforts to stop migrants crossing the Channel — underlined by Coastguards simply waving on even migrant boats in obvious distress, but refusing help — was demonstrated by the report, which said: “French police have stopped fewer than half of all migrants attempting to cross the English Channel since the deal was signed in 2018”.

This year, over 27,000 boat migrants are known to have landed on England’s southern shores — others may have made the crossing undetected. While the running total this year is less than the all-time record year of 2022, crucially all of these figures are dwarfed by the arrivals the government has changed the migration system to permit to arrive “legally” every year. Net migration is forecast to remain in the hundreds of thousands for the foreseeable future, the government’s own statistical body predicts, and even hit half a million in 2022, the highest level of net arrivals to the UK in recorded history.

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