Migrant traffickers step up Channel crossings to beat Priti Patel’s new laws

Channel people smugglers have mounted an autumn blitz to beat the introduction of Priti Patel's tough new laws and the winter weather, with a record 2,500 migrants having already made the crossing this month.

More than 800 people have reached the UK in small boats in the last three days, with 410 arriving on Saturday, 102 on Sunday and 294 on Monday after exploiting unseasonably calm and warm weather.

The 2,500 who have crossed in October so far is five times the rate for the whole of the same month last year, when fewer than 500 reached the UK. It takes the total for this year to 19,533, compared with 8,410 for the whole of 2020.

Home Office and Border Force sources said smugglers were capitalising on the good weather and migrants' fears that they needed to cross before the Nationalities and Borders Bill comes into force in the New Year.

The Bill will increase prison sentences for anyone arriving in the UK without permission from six months to four years, impose a maximum life sentence for people smugglers and pave the way for new processing centres, both in the UK and potentially abroad.

Lucy Moreton, professional officers for the Border Force union ISU, said: "People smugglers will make use of any fears to try to encourage people to make the crossing and pay more for the crossing."

With up to 2,000 migrants estimated to be waiting in northern France, whether sleeping rough or staying in cheap hotels, she anticipated further surges of crossings before the weather turned on Thursday.

Ms Moreton warned the processing centre on the Dover quayside at Tug Haven was "massively overcrowded" and Border Force had needed to convert conference rooms at Lydd airport and Frontier House, in Folkestone, into a temporary overflow screening centres.

"It's down to the numbers and the fact that we cannot move them on," she said. "The local authorities don't have space for them."

France only managed to stop around a third of those attempting the crossing, despite demands from Ms Patel that they increase the proportion to three quarters in return for the extra £54 million pledged by the Government for more patrols, surveillance and processing centres.

Alp Mehmet, Chairman of Migration Watch UK, said:"When we think things can’t get any worse in the Channel, they do just that. Will the government please see sense and restore enforcement resources? What is the point of more fruitless effort in the Channel if - once in - illegal migrants know they are here to stay?"

Meanwhile, the watchdog Ofsted said the housing of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in hotels was "unacceptable". The Home Office said children only remain in hotels "for as long as necessary" and are cared for and supported.

It comes as Spanish authorities battle to cope with a surge in migrants in the Balearic Islands, a route previously little-used by people traffickers which has become busy since the start of the Covid pandemic.

Last weekend saw a record 350 people arrive from Algeria in 29 small boats. More than 2,100 have made the perilous 150 to 200-mile crossing this year, up from 480 in 2019.

Police associations complain they are overwhelmed and immigration officials in Palma, Mallorca, are readying a first makeshift camp of tents in a disused army barracks with capacity for around 60 people.

"We do not have the means or the sufficient personnel to deal with the latest arrivals from migrant boats," the Balearic section of the Spanish police union told The Telegraph. The islands' local police union said it was "disgraceful what the security forces are having to face, with no solutions in sight".

Meanwhile, scores of migrants were rescued from drowning in the Mediterranean by Sea-Watch 3, a German charity ship, which went to the aid of a dinghy packed with 63 migrants some 35 miles off the Libyan coast. 

The rescue was one of seven carried out by the ship between Sunday and Monday.