Australian National Review – 973 illegal immigrants cross the English Channel in one day

The new daily record for the year came when four people died in French waters trying to cross the English Channel, including a two-year-old boy and a woman.

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.

Home Office figures put the total for 2024 at 26,612, higher than the 25,330 who had arrived at this time last year.

However, the figure is still lower than the same date in 2022, when 33,611 people entered the UK illegally by 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. This amount will be spent on monitoring technology, new covert capabilities, improving intelligence sharing between UK police forces and recruiting additional officers. National Crime Agency staff.

The Home Office said the funds came from the budget originally allocated to the Rwanda program under the previous Conservative government, measures that Labor scrapped when they formed a new government in July.

Four die in French waters

The landings took place on the same day that a two-year-old boy, a woman and two men were killed in two separate incidents off the French coast.

Prefect of the Pas-de-Calais region, Jacques Billant, confirmed on Saturday that the French coast guard had responded to an incident in which a boat with almost 90 people on board suffered an engine failure. French authorities rescued 15 people from the ship, including a boy who was unconscious and later died.

French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau later said 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 panic on board. Billant said some of the occupants fell into the sea and were rescued.

Two men and a woman, all in their 30s, were found unconscious in the bottom of the boat and had died despite the efforts of medics.

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

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said she had been in contact with Retailleau and posted on social media platform organizing these dangerous crossings by boat.

“The gangs don’t care whether people live or die – this is a terrible trade in lives.”

G7 Action Plan against smuggling

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

The Interior Ministry said the international partnership will strengthen the government’s strategy to disrupt human smuggling operations upstream, for example by disrupting smuggling routes in transit countries.

“Criminal smuggling gangs organizing small boat crossings undermine our border security and endanger lives. Our new administration is quickly accelerating cooperation with other countries to crack down on these dangerous gangs,” Cooper said in a statement on October 4.

The Interior Minister said the Anti-Smuggling Action Plan will help increase both voluntary and forced returns of illegal immigrants to their countries of origin.

Call to leave the 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 into Britain, a strategy that the previous government combined with its plans to send asylum seekers to Rwanda to send in her country. broader efforts to tackle illegal immigration.

Last month, former immigration secretary Robert Jenrick – who is running for leader of the Conservative Party – said Labor 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 on Britain to leave the European Convention on Human Rights, saying the document “creates an arsenal of laws” for illegal immigrants to frustrate their removal.

“We live in an era of mass migration. There are millions of people on the run who want to come to our great country. We must address this problem. We will never, ever address this as long as we remain within the European Convention on Human Rights,” Jenrick said.

PA Media contributed to this report.