Number of Channel migrants reaching UK doubles but no deportation flights since Brexit

A further 66 migrants including women and young children with no shoes reached English shores on Tuesday

Migrants arrive in UK overnight
The number of migrants reaching English shores in the first two months of 2021 is 86 per cent higher than in 2020 Credit: STEVE FINN 

The number of Channel migrants reaching the UK has doubled this year without the Home Office mounting a single flight to deport any of them since Brexit, The Telegraph understands.

The number of migrants reaching English shores in the first two months of 2021 is 531, compared with 286 in January and February last year, an 86 per cent increase. A further 66 migrants including women and young children with no shoes reached English shores on Tuesday.

That is despite the UK Government handing an extra £28 million in funding to the French to bolster police patrols and surveillance on the French beaches.

At the same time, it is understood that there have not been any flights so far this year to remove migrants. This comes despite a new law introduced on Jan 1 which made their asylum claims inadmissible if they had been in a safe third country before arriving in the UK.

The law replaced the Dublin agreement which lapsed after Brexit and under which EU nations agree to take back any migrants who can be shown to have travelled through them before reaching the UK.

The Government is understood to have been negotiating with EU countries to secure agreements for them to take back migrants that might have passed through them but it is not known whether any have been finalised. The Home Office declined to comment on Tuesday night.

It also emerged that policing a former military camp converted to house asylum seekers has cost almost £1 million since opening less than six months ago.

The first migrants arrived at Napier Barracks in Folkestone, Kent in September last year and policing minister Kit Malthouse has agreed to award Kent Police £850,000 to cover the costs linked to policing the controversial site.

Officers are regularly seen at the disused army base and called in to monitor protests, the most serious of which on Jan 29 saw a huge fire rip through an accommodation block leading to 14 arrests.

A Home Office spokesman said: “We are no longer bound by the EU’s Dublin Regulation which was rigid, inflexible and often abused by meritless claims that would effectively time out the process.

“In January, new rules were introduced which make asylum claims inadmissible where people have travelled through safe countries to get to the UK through illegal routes.

“The UK will continue to seek to return people who have no right to be here and arrive in the UK through illegally-facilitated crossings”

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Alp Mehmet, chair of think tank Migration Watch, said: “Despite Government efforts, such as they are, the situation gets worse. Indeed, it’s a mess. It will only start to improve once illegal arrivals are returned quickly in much greater numbers. 

"The initiative remains with the traffickers, who are ultimately succeeding. The French too must deal more effectively with the problem at their end and stop escorting illegal immigrants into British waters.” 

Ms Patel is drawing up plans for a further crackdown including life sentences for smugglers rather than the current maximum of 14 years.

A policy paper due this month is expected to tighten up what ministers claim is the “broken” asylum system by placing curbs on “litigious” human rights claimants who seek to delay their deportation and encourage judges to take a tougher stance against asylum seekers with criminal records.

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