More than 60 migrants were prevented from crossing the English Channel between France and the UK at the weekend. British police said they detained 36 people, and the French authorities arrested 27 people on Saturday. A further 134 were prevented from crossing over the last week.
Over the weekend, more than 150 migrants arrived in the UK after attempting to cross the Channel between mainland Europe and Britain. More than 50 were arrested by French authorities and brought back to France. In 2020, more than 9,500 made it across the water -- the numbers more than quadrupled on 2019 figures.
On December 7, the UK Home Office confirmed that 111 migrants had crossed the Channel to the UK, including five children, one of whom was a baby wearing no shoes or socks. Temperatures on Monday were reported as “near-freezing” and on land hovering at about 1 degree Celsius.
The French coast guard rescued 64 migrants in the Channel at the weekend who were attempting to cross the stretch of water towards the UK. The migrants, who were traveling on two separate boats, included children and a pregnant woman.
Doubled police patrols along French beaches, drones and radar, says British interior minister Priti Patel, will deter boat migrants. This year, 8,000 have risked the dangerous crossing over the English Channel.
Almost every day, French and British maritime authorities have to come to the rescue of migrants attempting to cross the English Channel, often in far from seaworthy boats and rafts. How are these sea rescues organized? And can British authorities force a migrant boat to turn back to France? Here's what you need to know.
French rescue boats and a Belgian helicopter were called when a migrant boat was seen in distress off the coastal town of Dunkirk. Two children and two adults have died, officials said.
Britain's special forces have taken control of the Liberia-registered oil tanker after stowaways, discovered aboard, turned violent. Initial reports suggested the ship, which had traveled from Nigeria, had been hijacked.
On Sunday, French police announced that they found the body of a migrant on the beach at Sangatte on the Channel coast. The man did not have any documents on him but was wearing a life jacket. Prosecutors suspect he had been hoping to cross the water towards Dover in the UK.
According to a report in the Telegraph on Sunday, Britain's Clandestine Channel Threat Commander is considering using nets in the Channel in order to deter migrant boats from crossing.
At the beginning of October, a flight chartered by the British Home Office left the UK for France with just one migrant on board. Under the Dublin agreement, the UK authorities say he should pursue his asylum claim in France. On Wednesday, October 7, the man’s lawyers went to court in France to try and stop his repatriation to Africa.
The British Home Secretary (interior minister) in a speech at the Conservative Party conference pledged to fix the "fundamentally broken asylum system" in the country. She said it was currently "neither firm nor fair," and needed a raft of new laws which she would start introducing in 2021.