973 Illegal Immigrants Cross English Channel in One Day

A group of people believed to be illegal immigrants are brought in by an RNLI lifeboat in Dover, England, on Oct. 5, 2024. Gareth Fuller/PA Wire

A total of 973 illegal immigrants crossed the English Channel in 17 boats on Saturday, the highest number in a single day so far this year.

According to Home Office figures, that brings the total for 2024 to 26,612, higher than the 25,330 who had arrived by this time last year.

However, the figure is still lower than at the same date in 2022, when 33,611 people had entered the UK illegally crossing the Channel by boat.

Last month, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper pledged £75 million to the new multi-agency Border Security Command tasked with tackling illegal immigration, to be spent on monitoring technology, new covert capabilities, improving intelligence-sharing across the UK’s police forces, and recruiting additional personnel at the National Crime Agency.

The Home Office said the funds were being redirected from the budget originally allocated under the previous Conservative government for the Rwanda scheme, measures which Labour scrapped when they formed a new government in July.

Four Die in French Waters

The landings happened the same day that a two-year-old boy, a woman, and two men died in two separate incidents off the French coast.

Prefect of the Pas-de-Calais region Jacques Billant confirmed on Saturday that the French coastguard had responded to an incident where a boat carrying nearly 90 people suffered engine failure. French authorities recovered 15 people from the vessel including a boy who was unconscious and later died.

French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau later said that the boy had been “trampled to death.”

Similar circumstances resulted in the deaths of a woman and two men in a second incident where a boat with 83 people on board suffered several engine failures, resulting in a panic on board. Billant said some of the occupants had fallen into the sea and were rescued.

Two men and a woman, all in their thirties, were found unconscious at the bottom of the boat and despite the efforts of medics, had died.

The prefect said they were “probably crushed and suffocated during the jostling and drowned in the 40 centimetres of water present in the boat.”

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said that she had been in touch with Retailleau, posting on social media platform X: “It is appalling that more lives have been lost in the Channel today, including a young child, as criminal smuggler gangs continue to organise these dangerous boat crossings.

“The gangs do not care if people live or die—this is a terrible trade in lives.”

G7 Anti-Smuggling Action Plan

Last week, the UK and other G7 nations agreed to the Anti-Smuggling Action Plan, which would include joint investigations and intelligence-sharing to combat transnational organised immigration crime.

The Home Office said the international partnership will enhance the government’s strategy to disrupt people smuggling operations upstream, such as by interrupting smuggling routes in transit countries.

“Criminal smuggling gangs who organise small boat crossings undermine our border security and put lives at risk. Our new government is rapidly accelerating cooperation with other countries to crack down on these dangerous gangs,” Cooper said in a statement on Oct. 4.

The home secretary said that the Anti-Smuggling Action Plan will help to increase both voluntary and enforced returns of illegal immigrants to countries of origin.

Calls to Leave ECHR

Before the Conservatives lost the July 4 election, they had also been working with partners in the European Union on measures to disrupt criminal gangs smuggling people to the UK, a strategy which the previous government paired with its plans to send asylum seekers to Rwanda in its wider efforts to tackle illegal immigration.

Last month, former immigration minister Robert Jenrick—who is running for leader of the Conservative Party—said that Labour had “surrendered to the smuggling gangs” when it scrapped the Rwanda plans, which the Tories said would act as a deterrent.

At the Conservative Party conference last week, Jenrick called for the UK to leave the European Convention on Human Rights, saying the document “creates an arsenal of laws” by which illegal immigrants can frustrate their removal.

“We live in an age of mass migration. There are millions of people on the move looking to come to our great country. We have to tackle this issue. We will never, never tackle it whilst we remain within the European Convention on Human Rights,” Jenrick said.

PA Media contributed to this report.