Lock your doors to stop migrants sneaking inside
Astonishing warning to families near Dover after Albanian teen wandered into woman’s house and demanded to make a call
RESIDENTS in Dover are being told to lock their doors to stop runaway Channel migrants slipping into homes to demand money, phones and getaway cars.
In an extraordinary letter, Dover district council warned tenants at a retirement complex to take security ‘ precautions’ after a panicking young Albanian walked from the beach into a lone woman’s flat and hid in her bedroom this weekend.
The council called the event ‘unnerving’ and said tenants must lock up to ‘avoid’ it happening again. It is believed to be the first ever official warning of its kind in this beleaguered south coast area which has been overwhelmed by illegal migrant boat arrivals.
The 16-year-old Albanian was one of around 90 young men in two traffickers’ boats who landed undetected by the authorities on Sunday at Dover’s Shakespeare Beach after crossing from Dunkirk.
The beach was left strewn with discarded red lifejackets as the arrivals ran to avoid police and Border Force. It is thought 30 are still at large somewhere in the UK, some collected in waiting cars by UK-based Albanian relatives, friends, or gang-masters who were waiting for them. The Albanian teenager went into
‘Lies they have been sold by people smugglers’
the home of Sue Doyle, 59, in Aycliffe – a short walk from the beach – when she opened her door in the morning to let out her dog into the fresh air.
Once inside, the migrant asked Ms Doyle for a lift to Manchester. When she refused, he demanded to use her mobile phone to ‘airdrop’ his location to a ‘getaway’ car he said was waiting nearby to take him to London or further north.
Her neighbour, alerted by Ms Doyle, raced into the house, found him hiding in the bedroom, and ‘ grabbed him by the scruff of the neck’.
He wrestled himself free, but by then police had arrived and took him away for questioning. They told a surprised Ms Doyle ‘ no offence had been committed’ and she didn’t press charges.
In a new ruse, Albanians are believed to be deliberately avoiding being picked up in the Channel – by patrolling Border Force rescue vessels and lifeboats – to reach British beaches and then escape to work in the black market, including cannabis growing farms scattered around the UK.
The Daily Mail has been told by Albanian sources that the arrivals are afraid of being detected after 12 male and female economic migrants were turned round in 72 hours and deported back to the capital Tirana by the Home Office earlier this month on a special flight from Stansted. They are also wary of being taken to the over- crowded main processing centre in Manston, Kent, a former RAF base where more than 3,000 migrants are currently housed in tents and old buildings suitable for half that number. Some have been kept there far longer than the five days that is promised as they wait for places in Home Office requisitioned hotels, which are running out of beds.
To bring down numbers there, some migrants, say our Tirana sources, have been let out of Manston – after their identities have been logged – on immigration bail. They have been taken by officials to Kent train stations, given tickets, and told to go ‘anywhere you want’. The Home Office has confirmed that ‘full security checks’ are carried out before migrants are allowed to leave. Those given bail have to report in person regularly. A spokesman added: ‘Despite the lies they have been sold by people smugglers, those entering the UK illegally via the Channel will not be allowed to start a new life here.’
‘They plan to be free in Britain,’ a source in the UK linked to immigration control said last night. ‘They deliberately don’t call the rescue services in mid-Channel when they reach English waters.
They want a chance to reach a beach and get away to start a new life. They also worry about being fingerprinted if they are brought into Dover by rescue vessels.’
After the Albanian escapee was found, local MP Natalie Elphicke said there was ‘growing concern’ over migrants landing on beaches without being intercepted at sea. At the Manston processing centre, an informant told us that the migrants are fed a vegetable-lacking diet of mainly crisps and packet croissants, adding: ‘Food is poor, boredom rife and sanitation basic. This may be to discourage migrants from making the Channel crossing.’
The informant said: ‘It is now dawning on these people that the life in this country is not what they were told or paid traffickers’ money for. There is little hope, if they claim asylum, of their case being processed, let alone accepted. ‘No money, no work, no education, no homes, no future and a life in basic hotels stretching into the future.’
With this prospect in store, no wonder they are running from beaches in a new headache for the over-burdened immigration system. And for the people of Aycliffe in Dover.
‘Food is poor, boredom rife and sanitation basic’