Illegal Migrant Crossings of English Channel Hit Highest Level of the Year

A group of people thought to be migrants are brought in to Dover, Kent, from a Border Forc
Gareth Fuller/PA Images via Getty Images
Kurt Zindulka

More than 400 illegal boat migrants were brought ashore on Monday, marking the highest number of daily crossings of the English Channel since the start of the year.

According to Home Office figures, 401 illegals successfully crossed the Channel on Monday from the beaches of France, the most seen in one day in 2024. This followed 327 boat migrant illegal arrivals on Sunday.

It means that nearly 3,000 illegals have crossed the Channel since the start of the year, despite Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s vow to the public to “stop the boats”.

Last year, an estimated 29,437 illegals arrived by boat in the UK, down from the record 45,774 arrivals seen in 2022.

While the government has claimed that this was a result of money spent on increased enforcement against people smuggling gangs and other measures, BBC fact-checkers confirmed claims from Brexit boss Nigel Farage that the decrease was largely a result of worse weather conditions compared to the previous year.

On Tuesday, Reform UK leader Richard Tice said that the government’s deterrence efforts, such as the plan to send boat migrants to Rwanda, are not working and that the only solution to the crisis is for the UK to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and begin sending migrant boats back to France.

“You leave the ECHR and you pick the boats up, [get] people out of the boats, and you safely take them back to Dunkirk and Calais which we are legally entitled to do under two international maritime treaties and nobody has proven me wrong because I am right,” Tice wrote in The Telegraph.

“But none of these gutless, feeble people in the House of Commons, whether it is Starmer, Sunak, Cleverly, any of them, have got the guts to do it. That is the only way this will stop.”

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