Channel people smuggler warns 2,000 asylum seekers could be sent to Britain EVERY DAY using larger vessels in an industry now worth ‘hundreds of millions’
Sir Keir Starmer’s ‘one-in, one-out scheme’ has no likelihood of discouraging Channel migrants unless it is significantly scaled up, it was claimed today.
The second migrant was successfully exiled to France as part of the deal – only for hundreds more to set off in dinghies from a beach near Calais.
Rob Lawrie, a former soldier who has been speaking to people smugglers for a new podcast, insisted the scheme was too small-scale to be a deterrent.
One people smuggler he spoke to suggested 2,000 migrants would have to be returned every week to persuade more from crossing – but even if that happens, more would continue to come from France in new bigger boats.
‘I was talking to a smuggler in Germany last week who said the UK needs to be sending back at least 2,000 a week – and even if that happened, they could send 2,000 more a day the other way,’ he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
‘It’s that much money involved in the people smuggling network… I’m talking hundreds of millions.
‘He also pointed out that down the line – ”next season”, he called it – they’re introducing 18-metre boats. We’ve had one this year with 132 migrants on board.
‘I understand this is a pilot scheme, but in order for this to be effective, they need to have about two to three thousand migrants a week heading to France – and even that won’t meet the number of migrants coming across the Channel.’
This morning, at least three dinghies were observed leaving Calais’ Gravelines beach for the sea, and hours later, Border Force pulled migrants ashore at Dover.
Around the same time, the Eritrean was escorted on an Air France flight that left Heathrow for Paris at 6.39 am.
In a last-minute legal challenge, the man’s lawyers had endeavoured to temporarily thwart his removal by arguing he was an ‘alleged trafficking victim’.
However, his effort was unsuccessful, and this morning he reached France. After three days in legal uncertainty, the first migrant deported under the scheme—an Indian man—was flown from London to Paris yesterday morning.
The Eritrean, who appeared to be in his 20s, was sitting in the last row of the aircraft, dressed in a white hooded top and black Adidas tracksuit trousers.
Flight AF1381 was full apart from the seat next to him, with three Home Office staff, including two security guards, sitting further along.
As the plane took off, the migrant, with short hair and a short beard, gazed out the window at the vivid orange sunrise.
While a Home Office officer was observed completing a complex form, he took a packet of Breton cookies and a cup of tea with sugar from the cabin crew.
At the High Court yesterday, Mr Justice Sheldon heard claims the man had been ‘forced to flee Eritrea in 2019 because of forced conscription’ and spent time in Ethiopia, South Sudan and Libya.
He travelled to France, where he remained in Paris for about a week, where he was ‘homeless and destitute and constantly fearing for his life’.
The man then went to Dunkirk, where he remained in the encampment known as ‘The Jungle’ for about three weeks, without declaring asylum in France.
He arrived in the UK via a small boat and was detained by the UK Border Force on August 6, before being told his asylum claim in the UK was inadmissible on August 9.
Barristers for the man, who cannot be named, had argued that the decision was ‘procedurally unfair’ as he had not been given sufficient opportunity to put forward evidence supporting his claim that he was an ‘alleged trafficking victim’.
In a ruling, Mr Justice Sheldon said, ‘There is no serious issue to be tried in this case,’ and that the man gave differing accounts of his allegations of trafficking.
‘It was open to (the Home Office) to conclude that his credibility was severely damaged and his account of trafficking could not reasonably be believed,’ the judge added.
He also said there was ‘significant public interest in favour of the claimant’s removal’.
Hundreds of migrants attempted to cross the Channel this morning as the deportation took place.
At least one inflatable dinghy full of young men made its way out to sea from Gravelines beach, northeast Calais, at daybreak this morning.
As the boat came close to shore, people waded through waist-high water towards it and a child was handed aboard before it went out to sea.
In the town itself at 5.30 am, a group of 40 young men emerged from a tranquil side street carrying an inflatable boat over their heads before casting it into a canal.
From the bank, police officers observed the boat’s driver struggling to maintain a straight path.
Earlier in the night, a group of men formed a human chain to help drag people out of the mud after a failed endeavour to launch a boat in the canal.
Another Eritrean man successfully asked the judges on Tuesday to temporarily stop his removal after the same judge found there was a ‘serious issue to be tried’ over whether his expulsion was lawful amid claims he had been trafficked.
In that case, the court heard that the national referral mechanism (NRM) – which recognises and evaluates victims of slavery and human trafficking – found that the man had probably not been trafficked but offered him time to make additional representations.
Mr Justice Sheldon said there was ‘still room for further investigation into the trafficking claim’.
The Home Office changed its policy on re-examining rulings on modern slavery after Tuesday’s hearing. This means that anyone who wishes to challenge an NRM decision after being sent to a safe country would not be able to do so.
Alternatively, they may file a lawsuit from another nation, like France.
The latest deportation will come as a relief to the Home Office amid pressure to tackle the small boats crisis, with Donald Trump suggesting Sir Keir Starmer should use the military.
The US President said during his state visit to the UK that the Prime Minister ‘should take a very strong stand’ on immigration, which is ‘really hurting him badly’.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said the first return showed people crossing the Channel that ‘if you enter the UK illegally, we will seek to remove you’.
She said she would ‘continue to challenge any last-minute, vexatious attempts to frustrate a removal in the courts’.
The returns agreement had encountered increasing scrutiny after reports of flights for removals being withdrawn earlier this week.
Ministers agreed on the pilot scheme with the French government in July as part of efforts to deter the record number of small boat arrivals.
Mr Trump pressed Sir Keir to include the military only hours after the first removal under the deal.
During a joint news conference with the prime minister at Chequers, the president emphasised his own track record of safeguarding the US borders and implied that the UK faced a comparable challenge.
He said, ‘You have people coming in and I told the Prime Minister I would stop it, and it doesn’t matter if you call out the military; it doesn’t matter what means you use.’
‘It destroys countries from within, and we’re actually now removing a lot of the people that came into our country.’
The American leader later said of Sir Keir in a Fox News interview, ‘I think he should take a very strong stand on immigration. It’s really hurting him badly.’
As Trump has stated, our government needs to halt all assistance for illegal migrants and use our military to expel them. Perhaps even send in the SAS to take out these people smugglers because we are effectively being overrun, and if Starmer doesn’t like it, he can always look the other way.
Although this sector is now valued at hundreds of millions of pounds, the truth is that it costs taxpayers billions of pounds, costing us our lives, and causes suffering for millions of people, forcing us to make sacrifices so that our government can allow migrants to enter the UK safely.
The lives, safety, and welfare of our own citizens should be our government’s top priority, but under Labour, these needs have been neglected. This must end.
Regardless of the repercussions for them, we must physically halt these unlawful crossings; otherwise, we will be left to suffer in order for Labour to create space for others.
Pushbacks have been utilised by other nations; they were successful, and the world did not condemn them.
We should quit calling them ‘asylum seekers’; they are ‘freebie seekers’. It’s as simple as that, and other countries they cross have more sense than to give them lots of rewards to entice them in.
The government could prevent this. It is utterly repulsive and wicked that they appear determined to destroy the nation and demoralise its population, even though they could defend our borders and its citizens.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 