Violence from people-smuggling gangs and illegal migrants along the French coastline is escalating to such a degree that children are even being used as “human shields” during confrontations with police, a British Border Force official has claimed.
Deputy director of the Small Boats Operational Command for the UK’s Border Force Carol Heginbottom said that the situation “is getting worse” as illegal migrants and human trafficking gangs on the beaches of France are beginning to panic about legislation passed last week which supposedly clears the way for Britain to remove illegal boat migrants to asylum processing centres in Rwanda, rather than putting them up at taxpayer expense in hotels across the country.
“We’ve seen them [attack police] with sticks, metal bars, machetes, using women and children that are there to cross, using them as human shields to prevent law enforcement taking action,” Heginbottom told GB News.
“The violence that is now shown to our French colleagues trying to prevent the launches, trying to save people from putting their lives at risk, is huge,” she said, adding: “It’s growing, it’s getting worse and we need to continue to keep plugging away at stopping these organised criminal gangs that are putting people at risk.”
The comments came in the wake of a migrant being shot and seriously injured as rival people-smuggling gangs squared off at the Loon-Plage migrant camp near Dunkirk, with witnesses reportedly saying that “individuals took out rifles, Kalashnikov-type weapons” to “settle scores”.
French police have reportedly been told to step up enforcement efforts to prevent the small boats from setting sail in the English Channel, where they are often escorted by the French Navy to UK territorial waters where they are handed off to the British Border Force and volunteer coastguards and brought to shore at Dover.
The increased police activity comes in the wake of another tragic incident in which five people, including a seven-year-old child, drowned after falling off an overcrowded migrant boat. France faced heavy criticism for the actions of the navy, which rather than taking the boat back to shore after the drownings, decided instead to continue escorting the dinghy into British waters.
Paris has argued that it would be unsafe — and supposedly illegal under their interpretation of international maritime laws — to try to stop or turn back migrant boats as the migrants have threatened to harm themselves and even their own children if interfered with. Other countries like Australia differ on the legality of the practice, with the wildly successful Operation Sovereign Borders enacted by former PM Tony Abbott all but eliminating illegal migrant boat crossings from the island nation of Indonesia.
French police have been seen using some novel tactics to deter illegal crossings of the Channel, with an officer being pictured using knives to slash an inflatable boat as it tried to set off from the at a Gravelines beach, near Dunkirk. However, despite their efforts, a further 500 boat migrants successfully arrived over the weekend, taking the total for the year to 7,167, a new all-time high for the first third of the year.
TOPSHOT – French police officers puncture a smuggler’s boat with a knife to prevent migrants from embarking in an attempt to cross the English Channelon the beach of Gravelines, near Dunkirk, northern France on April 26, 2024. Five migrants, including a seven-year-old girl, died on April 23, 2024, trying to cross the Channel from France to Britain, local authorities said, just hours after Britain passed a controversial bill to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda. (Photo by Sameer Al-DOUMY / AFP) (Photo by SAMEER AL-DOUMY/AFP via Getty Images)
Yet, a potential political solution to the Channel crisis and France’s obstinacy may be emerging, with Ireland drafting emergency legislation to send the increasing number of migrants illegally crossing the soft border with the UK’s Northern Ireland supposedly in order to flee before being removed to Rwanda by the British Home Office.
With fresh leverage, Downing Street said that it would not take back any migrants from Ireland so long as fellow EU member state France refuses Channel migrant returns. However, it is unclear even if Britain convinces France to take back the boats, whether any efforts could stem the tide if the European Union’s external borders remain open to alleged asylum seekers from the Middle East, Africa, and the Balkans.