Nearly 300 illegal migrants have successfully landed in the United Kingdom after crossing the English Channel from France this year, despite the Brexit promise to ‘take back control’ of the country’s borders.
Over the weekend, the UK’s Border Force brought ashore five small rubber boats carrying a total of 92 illegals. Authorities in France prevented an additional 92 migrants from crossing the Channel.
An analysis of English Channel crossings has found that 285 illegal aliens have landed on British shores since the official departure from the European Union, the Daily Mail reported.
The Minister for Immigration Compliance Chris Philp said: “The Government continues to undertake substantial measures to tackle this unacceptable problem of illegal migration.
“In January we introduced new rules which mean we can treat asylum claims as inadmissible if they have travelled through safe countries to get to the UK.
“These crossings are illegal which is why we are pursuing the criminals behind these crossings, returning migrants who have no right to stay in the UK to safe countries and will continue to do everything we can to make this route unviable.”
Last week, Home Secretary Priti Patel said that the government intends to publish a policy paper within the next two weeks, outlining plans to crack down on the illegal people smuggling trade that facilitates the “plague” of illegal crossings.
Patel said that later this year, the government would seek to pass a Sovereign Borders Bill which will place limitations on “litigious” human rights claimants trying to skirt deportation.
Alleged asylum seekers will also be required to present all their refugee qualifications at the outset of their application, rather than adding last-minute claims as a basis for additional legal challenges.
The home secretary also is reportedly considering lowering the bar for foreign criminals to be deported, with those serving six-month prison sentences being subject to removal from the country for the first time.
It is unclear how this will be implemented, however, as the British government has so far failed to secure a deal with the European Union — or indeed any individual member state — on the matter of deportations.
Last year, the number of deportations carried out by the Home Office fell by over 4,000 over the previous year, representing a 79 per cent drop. Officials blamed the coronavirus crisis for the dramatic decline.
The government has also failed to demonstrate any willingness to take the unilateral step of simply immediately returning migrants caught at sea, like the wildly successful Operation Sovereign Borders strategy adopted in Australia under former Prime Minister Tony Abbott.
In 2020, over 8,400 illegal migrants were recorded to have crossed the English Channel from France, over four times as many as came the year before.
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