This is the moment dry-footed French police officers declined to intervene as UK-bound migrants boarded ‘taxi boats’ off the coast of Calais.
Footage shows dozens of migrants waiting waist-deep in the sea for the smuggling gangs who are tasked with ferrying them across the Channel.
But in an unexpected twist, members of the Gendarme are seen helplessly standing on the sand as they watch asylum seekers board the small boats bound for England in a calm and orderly fashion.
French authorities say they have been working tirelessly to halt a surge of asylum seekers from reaching Britain on small boats, but as the video shows, cops are finding it harder to intercept migrants.
This is because people smugglers have been upgrading their tactics to throw-off police.
Instead of inflating their boats on beaches which are closely patrolled by cops, smuggling gangs are now launching their vessels from hidden locations along the coast.
They then sail close to the shore, where they pick up migrants, as if they were a taxi service.
The new tactic means migrants, who now wait in the sea and several metres from the shore, are harder to reach by the Gendarme.
This is because rules for police forces suggest that it is too risky for them to try to reach boats once they are already in the water, the BBC reports.
The only instance in which authorities can intervene inside the water is if they are trying to rescue someone from drowning.
Speaking to BBC, Colonel Olivier Alary said: ‘The police will be able to do more… if the rules governing our actions at sea are changed’.
His remarks come after the French government declared intention to revise those rules in the coming weeks in order to give the police more leeway.
French authorities are reportedly set to introduce a new maritime doctrine from the beginning of next month which would allow police to intercept dinghies up to 300 metres from the shore.
It comes after extraordinary scenes on Tuesday showed dozens of French police and coastguards looking on as men and women crammed onto an overloaded boat off Gravelines beach, near Calais.
More than 50 police tried to stop as many as 200 migrants reaching the sea – and with the aid of teargas grenades stopped more than half.
But those who dodged police simply waited for the so called ‘taxi boat’ to ferry them across the Channel while police remained under strict rules to not apprehend anyone in the sea.
More than 900 migrants crossed the Channel in small boats on Friday, new government figures have shown.
The Home Office said 919 people made the perilous journey in 14 boats, which pushed the total of arrivals for the year to just over 16,000.
This shows a 42 per cent increase year-on-year and is up 79 per cent from the same date in 2023.
But Friday’s total number of migrant crossings was not the highest daily number so far this year. On May 31, 1,195 people arrived into Britain via the Channel in small boats.
Last year, almost 37,000 people left the northern French coastline and arrived in the UK.
Keir Starmer this week was ridiculed for boasting that Britain is leading the world in tackling illegal migration, despite record numbers continuing to cross the Channel this month.
The Prime Minister highlighted UK plans to slap travel bans and asset freezes on people-smuggling kingpins in talks with fellow world leaders at the G7 summit in Canada.
He held one-on-one talks with his Italian counterpart Giorgia Meloni and Downing Street said afterwards that he ‘raised the UK’s world-leading work on people-smuggling sanctions’.
Meanwhile, a Downing Street spokesman said Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron agreed during a meeting at the G7 in Canada that the Channel situation was ‘deteriorating’.
The pair both believe that ‘migration should be a key focus’ and they should ‘continue to work closely with other partners to find innovative ways to drive forward progress’, according to a No10 readout.
This week, however, there was little sign of any deterrent in action as gangs who organise the crossings continued to outwit French police.
