A new record high of illegal migrants crossing the English Channel this year from the beaches of France was set on Monday, prompting Reform UK leader Nigel Farage to declare that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak “can’t stop the boats”.
A total of 882 illegal aliens successfully reached British shores on Monday after crossing the Channel in 15 small boats operated by people-smuggling gangs along the French coast.
Monday’s crossings marked the highest figure for the year and took the total since January to 12,313, according to calculations from the Daily Mail.
The paper noted that this was 18 per cent higher than during the same time last year, when 10,472 illegals had made the journey, and up five per cent from 2022 when 11,690 had landed at this point of the year.
It means this year is currently on pace to surpass the yearly record set in 2022, which saw 45,774 boat migrants recorded reaching the country.
Responding to the continued waves of illegals pouring into the country, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said: “Rishi can’t stop the boats and Labour don’t care. This is a national security emergency.”
While Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has attempted to claim his policies resulted in the decline in illegal arrivals seen last year when 29,437 migrants reached the country via the busy waterway, this year’s increase backs up claims from Nigel Farage and even the BBC that the weather was likely more of a factor in the reduction seen in 2023.
Prime Minister Sunak has pinned his hopes on deterring the people smuggling trade with the long-delayed Boris Johnson-era scheme to send illegals to the East African nation of Rwanda to have their asylum claims processed offshore rather than putting them up at taxpayer expense in hotels in Britain while awaiting a decision.
However, despite already paying £240m to Rwanda, not a single migrant removal flight has taken off, with the scheme being mired in legal challenges both at home and abroad, with the European Court on Human Rights (ECHR) controversially stepping in to block the first attempted flight in the summer of 2022.
Although the United Kingdom left the European Union in 2020, its membership in the Strasbourg-based ECHR was unaffected given that it is technically a separate institution. Sunak’s election manifesto said that if re-elected he would consider leaving the European court if it negatively impacted national security, however, critics, including Nigel Farage, have said that the government should have already left the ECHR and his Reform party vowed to do so if given power.
In addition to arguing for the UK to leave the Strasbourg court, Reform has called for the adoption of a turn-back-the-boats approach to stop the Channel crisis.
Appearing on TalkTV this week, Reform UK Candidate for Wellingborough & Rushden Ben Habib said that the UK should create a specific boat migrant force, supplied with sensors, drones, fast boats, and well-trained professionals to immediately capture and return boats as they set off from the beaches of France.
Habib said that the current system is aiding the people smugglers, with the French Navy typically shadowing migrant boats into British territorial waters where they are handed off to either the UK Border Force or Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) who act as a “taxi service” in taking them ashore at Dover.
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