Nigel Farage has warned that there may be a “massive influx” of boat migrants, with illegals trying to break into Britain before the country leaves the EU and can make its own laws on returning people not eligible for asylum.

The Brexit Party leader has led an explosive investigative campaign where he exposed the increase in boat migrant incursions. He also revealed that the French navy is escorting migrant boats across the English Channel into British territorial waters and coordinating with UK Border Force on handing over the illegal aliens.

“The traffickers are now using Brexit as their key selling point. If we do not, as I hope, extend the transition period beyond the end of 2020, I predict there will be a massive influx this summer. For this reason, our politicians cannot wait until the end of transition for new legislation. Priti Patel must act now,” Mr Farage wrote in The Telegraph on Wednesday.

This is not the first time the prospect of Britain leaving the EU has spurred smugglers into transporting more migrants than usual across the Channel, with the BBC reporting in 2018 and 2019 the spike in landings after “fake news” that Brexit will give the UK more power over its immigration and asylum laws.

Under the current, effectively non-binding, international law, national authorities cannot intervene with the boats unless the illegals consent or they see a vessel in distress. Home secretary Priti Patel is, according to The Times, looking into new powers that will enable the UK to turn back migrants in the English Channel.

These international laws did not, however, deter Australia’s former prime minister, Tony Abbott, from launching seven years ago, Operation Sovereign Borders. The programme brought down illegal boat landings to almost zero after Australian authorities simply enforced the strict policy of turning the boats back to their countries of origin, or third countries for the processing of asylum applications.

Mr Farage wrote on Wednesday that the government should consider engaging the assistance of Mr Abbott, following reports that the Home Office is already speaking to Roman Quaedvlieg, the former chief of Australia’s border force.

The Brexit Party leader also criticised the French — who claim only to be escorting the migrant boats as a matter of safety — for doing little “to stop this scam” despite the UK giving “France £61 million of taxpayers’ money since 2015”.

“The ease with which these people are welcomed into Britain as though they are in need, despite having left an equally safe European country an hour or two earlier, makes me so angry,” Mr Farage wrote.

Mr Farage was out on the water again on Wednesday and when he came across a dinghy entering British territory, where he observed that “one or two” of the passengers — the “vast majority” of which were “young men of fighting age” –“were pretty aggressive towards us”.

He also conjectured that due to their age, that it was possible “that a principal reason for their flight is that they are dodging conscription” or that “It is also entirely possible that some of those arriving were part of the defeated ISIS caliphate army.”

Breitbart London has reported in recent years that jihadists had used the cover of the mass waves of migrants to enter Europe. Europol said in 2016 that it was “indisputable” that groups like Islamic State would use the migrant crisis to traffic terrorists into Europe to commit terror attacks.

The mastermind behind the 2015 Paris terror attacks, Belgian national Abdelhamid Abaaoud, as well as the majority of his fellow attackers had posed as Syrian asylum seekers and used the Mediterranian migrant route to enter Europe.