Illegal crossings of the English Channel hit a new record for the year as nearly a thousand migrants were brought ashore by British authorities Saturday after setting sail from the French coastline.
A total of 973 illegal aliens in 17 people smuggler-operated small boats crossed the Channel on Saturday, marking a fresh high in daily crossings for the year. Before Saturday, the previous record occurred on June 18th when 882 illegals reached UK soil in 15 boats.
The latest crossings came after another 395 illegals reached Britain on Friday, taking the total for the year to 26,612. This means that the illegal boat migration is up over the previous year, with 25,330 crossing by this time in 2023. However, the number of illegal arrivals is slightly down from its peak in 2022 when 33,611 had landed at this point of the year, the PA News agency reports.
The yearly high for boat migrant landings on Saturday came as another four people, including a two-year-old boy, died as they attempted to traverse the busy and dangerous waterway in unseaworthy small boats.
French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau revealed that the young boy was “trampled to death in a boat” by other migrants. According to the Daily Mail, the dead child was found on a boat with almost 90 other migrants.
This week, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said that the government would immediately invest £75 million to ramp up border security measures and to facilitate National Crime Agency investigations to thwart people smuggling networks.
It came as Britain and other G7 countries agreed to increase cooperation in confronting smugglers, which will include joint investigations as well as more intelligence sharing about migrant routes used by traffickers.
The G7 plan also committed to “working collaboratively” with social media companies to “do more to respond to online content that advertises migrant smuggling services”.
However, despite the continued influx of illegal migrants, the left-wing Labour Party government, like successive Tory governments before it, has refused to enact a turn-back-the-boats approach as successfully demonstrated by former Australian PM Tony Abbott’s Operation Sovereign Borders.
Commenting after the latest illegal arrivals, Reform UK Member of Parliament Rupert Lowe remarked: “I always try to understand where political opponents are coming from. But on thousands of unknown foreign young men illegally entering the UK? Then cared for and housed at our expense? Endangering British people?
“It’s entirely unjustifiable – there is no reasonable defence.”