Nearly 400 illegal boat migrants reached UK shores this week amid reports that trained militants from the Middle East are gathering on the coastline of Belgium in a bid to break into Britain.
Some 394 illegals successfully crossed the English Channel from Dunkirk in France on Friday, the Daily Mail reported. This marked the first crossings in nearly two weeks, a lull largely due to inclement weather.
While nearly 8,000 boat migrants have made the often perilous journey since the start of the year, there has been a recorded decline of 44 per cent since last year, and 23 per cent over 2024. However, it remains to be seen whether the numbers will stay lower as the weather improves.
Regardless, the last crossings take the total to over 200,000 since the migrant crisis in the Channel began nine years ago.
They also come just weeks after the left-wing Labour Party government agreed to hand over another £662 million ($890m) to the French to pay for police patrols of people-smuggling hotspots along the Calais coastline.
This is on top of the near billion pounds sterling that previous Tory governments have committed to Paris, with little to show for it.
Although this agreement will see some UK taxpayer cash devoted to fund a team of maritime officers specialising in intercepting boats at sea, the French have only agreed to enforce any turnarounds against vessels with fewer than 20 migrants, over supposed safety concerns.
Even if the hundreds of millions spent on increased French patrols succeed in cutting down crossings, some have warned that the trafficking gangs and migrants will simply move up the coast to Belgium.
Indeed, Westkust Police Chief Nicholas Paelinck told Belgium’s House Committee on Home Affairs this week that there has been a surge in “ex-military personnel” from countries like Iraq protecting migrant boats as they set off toward England.
“Officers were threatened by the soldiers, and a mirror was even smashed with an iron bar. We conducted a risk analysis, and it is too dangerous to operate on that beach anymore. We will not do that again,” he said per GB News.
Paelinck went on to report that officers had discovered “weapons of war and ammunition” in migrant camps and that in his estimation, it is “only a matter of time” before Belgian officers are attacked.
Director of the Centre for Migration Control, Rob Bates, told the broadcaster: “I think, unfortunately, as the flows shift up from Belgium to France, it just shows Labour’s folly of putting all their eggs in the French deal basket.
“And actually, this is now a situation where any collaboration with European partners won’t yield the results that we need them to. It’s time to just finally take that step and embark on a policy of detention and deportation.”
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