Dozens of migrants waded into the sea to board UK-bound boats as French police stood and watched on, just days after four died in an attempted crossing.
Images taken on Monday showed the overloaded dinghy floating on the coast at Dunkirk, with another making its way towards the UK further ahead in the distance.
Several of the migrants, who appeared to be mainly men, were seen donning orange life jackets and dangling their legs in the open water as cops stood by idly on the shore.
It comes just days after four migrants tragically drowned while trying to board a water taxi off the coast of Saint Etienne au Mont, near Calais, on Thursday.
Rescue efforts began around 7.30am local time, but Francois-Xavier Lauch, the prefect of Pas-de-Calais, said two men and two women had died, with 42 others rescued.
Lauch said at the time that the four who died were ‘already quite far into the sea’.
‘The currents, which can be dangerous here, swept them away,’ he added.
Two days later, a Sudanese national, who is alleged to have piloted the boat from France to the UK, was charged with endangering life.
Alnour Mohamed Ali, 27, appeared at Folkestone Magistrates Court and, through an interpreter, indicated a not guilty plea.
He was remanded in custody and will appear at Canterbury Crown Court on May 11.
The identities of those who died have not yet been released, and French prosecutors are continuing their investigations into the circumstances that led to the launch of the taxiboat.
The term refers to a vessel used to ferry migrants from beaches to dinghies waiting offshore.
Thirty-eight people were returned to the French shore, but 74 ‘sailed on to the UK,’ the National Crime Agency (NCA) has said.
Investigators are interviewing those who made the journey.
The UK’s migration minister Mike Tapp described every death in the Channel as a ‘tragedy’.
‘Through our Border Security Act, officers now have stronger powers to act earlier and disrupt, intercept, and take down the operations of criminal smuggling gangs who bring illegal migrants to our shores,’ he said in a statement.
Two migrants also lost their lives on April 1 during another attempted crossing.
They were the first fatalities of the year, with 36 people dying in 2025.
It comes as Emmanuel Macron’s government rejected a proposal from Shabana Mahmood to allow Border Force vessels to intercept boats in French waters.
The plan was put forward as negotiations continue to renew a multimillion-pound migrant patrol deal between the UK and France.
The current agreement was set to expire in March but was extended by two months while both sides haggle over new terms.
There are also fears that a failure to strike a new deal on funding for beach patrols could turbocharge crossings even further over the warm summer months.
During the negotiations, British officials proposed deploying vessels from their fleet of six 42-metre Border Force cutters and five commercial transfer vessels in addition to rigid inflatable boats.
The plan would have seen British vessels intercept small boats before they reached UK waters, take the migrants on board, and return them to northern France.
Currently, Border Force picks up migrants once they have crossed into UK territorial waters to prevent casualties, before taking them ashore at Dover.
However, the proposal was rejected by the French because it would have involved British officers entering their territorial waters, which they described as a ‘red line’.
The details were revealed by French satirical newspaper Le Canard Enchaîné.
It also revealed that British taxpayers have funded 100 new police vehicles for gendarme in the Pas de Calais – equivalent to a quarter of the total they have available.
The UK will pay France £16.5million to cover the cost of nearly 700 police officers patrolling northern France during the two-month extension, which expires in May.
Taxpayers have already given £658million in security payments to France since 2018, a report by the House of Commons Library set out last year.
