Small boat arrivals hit 7,395 this year
DOZENS of migrants continued to cross the Channel by small boat yesterday in choppy conditions.
The figure for this month so far is 1,449 arrivals in 32 boats. This means 7,395 in 174 boats have made the crossing so far this year.
Border Force vessels brought around 80 people into Dover harbour yesterday morning amid windy conditions.
Crammed
It made crossing the 21-mile stretch of water between France and the Kent coast particularly treacherous.
And it comes after 98 people were intercepted in two dinghies on Wednesday – with an average of 49 crammed in on each inflatable.
Around 50 asylum seekers – including at least two women – were brought into the harbour in Dover, Kent, on Border Force cutter Defender in the morning.
And a Border Force catamaran was seen returning to the port with more migrants on board shortly after 10am. The busiest day so far this year came on April 22 when 497 people crossed the Dover Straits in inflatable dinghies or other small craft.
By this point last year, a total of 9,296 migrants had already crossed the Channel – 1,901 more than the rolling total for 2023.
Last year saw a record total of 45,755 migrants detected arriving by small boats – 60 per cent higher than the previous year’s 28,526.
More than half (51 per cent) of those people reached Britain in the three months of August, September and October.
August saw 8,631 asylum seekers arrive on the Kent coast – the highest number of any month since data has been collected. Males represented 87 per cent of arrivals and almost half were either Albanian (28 per cent) or Afghan (20 per cent). Officials have warned as many as 80,000 migrants could cross this year.