Kentish Express Ashford & District
Migrants ‘want to be found and helped’
Migrants are deliberately being caught when landing in Kent because they are not afraid of being repatriated, a hearing was told.
Some are even dialling 999 from their boats to be picked up.
The revelations came from a police chief and a National Crime Agency boss at a Home Affairs committee hearing.
Kent’s Chief Constable Alan Pughsley said: “There is a significant difference with the migrants that come across in the way we are talking about today.
“They want to be found and helped. On some occasions from their own boats they are phoning 999 and asking for our help. There is a significant shift in clandestine migration in the widest sense.”
Steve Rodhouse, director-general of operations at the National Crime Agency, told the hearing on Tuesday last week: “People are actively seeking being caught or engaging with UK authorities because rightly or wrongly, they don’t fear being returned.
“That, I think, is something that is a significant player in the issue here.”
He acknowledged that the Home Office would argue that a number of people have been sent back and said that was not his area of expertise.
But he said: “I think at the moment it is in the minds of the facilitators and in the minds of those people willing to make the journey that there is a very low risk that they will be returned.”
This is in contrast to the yearslong method of illegal immigrants hiding in the back of lorries coming into Britain and clambering out further inland.
The present trend of migrants arriving by dinghy and other small craft continued over the last week.
Several more landing were reported on the week of the hearing. On the previous Sunday, a mother, father and their five children were found in Kingsdown after their RHIB was spotted off the coast. The boat was recovered a mile off shore and the family were found by police nearby.
Two more incidents happened on Monday, at 9am and noon, leading to four men being arrested on suspicion of helping migrants enter the UK.
Fifteen men, all of whom claimed to be Iranian, were found on the two vessels, the first of which was brought to Dover shortly after Border Force were alerted at about 9am.
Nine men were found and three arrested.
At about midday a second boat was seen off Dungeness. Six men were on board and one was arrested. All those not arrested were interviewed by immigration officials.
‘On some occasions from their own boats they are phoning 999 and asking for our help’