THE MIGRANT BOAT GRAVEYARD
At a Home Office depot, row after row of dinghies piled three high reveal colossal scale of Channel crossings
LYING empty and abandoned at a high- security Government warehouse, this is the ‘dinghy graveyard’ that gives some insight into the true scale of the migrant crisis on the English Channel.
Pictures reveal hundreds of vessels – many believed to have been used in attempted journeys to Britain – dumped and piled high in rows at the secluded complex.
The existence of the storage facility emerged yesterday amid a festering diplomatic rift between the UK and France over how to tackle the unprecedented number of crossings.
More than 2,800 migrants have reached the UK this year across the world’s busiest shipping route on flimsy vessels, often organised by criminal gangs of human traffickers, compared with just 1,850 over the previous 12 months.
It was not previously known what had become of the confiscated small boats that arrived on British shores during the surge in activity over the last year.
But it can now be revealed that many of the vessels have ended up behind a hi-tech security system at a £6million Home Office facility just over two miles from Dover.
Startling images reveal several long rows of vessels – many ill- equipped for crossing the English Channel – stacked in piles.
Fibreglass-bottomed fishing boats and highspecification rigid inflatable boats, known as ribs, can be seen among the deserted fleet.
The collection also contains one particularly unusual means of entry – the £220 bright yellow kayak used by Iranian migrant Masoud Mohammadifar, who paddled over to Britain last year.
Last August the Mail revealed how Masoud, an international kayaker for Iran, became the first migrant to use such a tiny craft to make the treacherous 21-mile journey from Calais to Kent.
He had escaped from Iran and travelled to the French coast after being jailed as a suspected American spy when he shared a Facebook photo of himself wearing a US t-shirt.
Masoud paddled across the Channel with his friend, fellow Iranian and former Tehran taxi driver Hadi Hossein Nejad, 28.
After arriving in the UK the pair lived in Home Office accommodation in south London and then migrants’ hostels in the Midlands.
Masoud, now 40, has had his claim for asylum turned down twice and is being threatened with imminent deportation by the Home Office.
Speaking from his hostel yesterday via a friend, he warned that migrants are being coerced by trafficking gangs operating in Calais to come to Britain on a false promise that they will get benefits, a free house and an education.
‘It is a lie which makes the traffickers rich men,’ he said.
The Home Office storage facility is located in a discreet area of industrial land in Whitfield, Kent, having been bought by the Government in 2014.
Sources said that the building is used to store an array of vehicles linked to Border Force interceptions, such as lorries involved in the transport of counterfeit goods. The yard containing the peoplesmuggling vessels is surrounded by two fences and a secure boundary monitored by motionsensor devices.
Vehicles arriving at the warehouse complex, which is staffed 24 hours a day, first need to pass a security set at a set of double gates. Several other boats pictured at the facility can be matched up to other well- documented Border Force interventions on the Channel.
A Home Office source said: ‘ We are going after the criminals responsible for these illegally facilitated crossings. As part of the investigations, the boats are securely stored to use as evidence in prosecutions of people smugglers.’
One of the boats, a white and blue dinghy, arrived carrying 14 migrants on June 10 having previously been escorted by the French navy boat Abeille Languedoc. Another small motorised boat containing a cabin was used by 34 migrants, including women and children, to reach the UK in February last year.
More than 500 migrants are understood to have travelled on boats across the Channel last week alone.
On Thursday Calais MP PierreHenri Dumont urged Priti Patel to ‘face the truth’ after he denied her claims that French authorities were not stopping boats just 250 yards from their coast. His comments came after the Home Secretary said she blamed Paris for failing to get to grips with the migrant situation.
Numbers of crossings have rocketed on the Channel despite Miss Patel’s promise, made in October, that she would have virtually eliminated the issue by now.
A Home Office spokesman said: ‘These crossings are illegally facilitated and no one should be attempting them in the first place.
‘France, from where these crossing originate, is a manifestly safe country with a fully functioning asylum system. Genuine refugees who are in France can and should claim asylum there and have no excuse to refuse the chance to do so and travel illegally and dangerously to the UK instead.’
‘Boats are stored to use as evidence’