Dozens of migrants battled through teargas grenades on a beach near Calais this morning before setting off for Britain.
Extraordinary scenes showed dozens of French police and coastguards looking on as men and some women crammed onto an overloaded boat off Gravelines beach.
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 they could not stop them all. Soon, large groups including women, and one man hobbling on crutches, made it to the waves.
There, be it ankle deep or thigh deep, they stood – with an officer explaining they remained under strict rules not to apprehend anyone in the sea, however shallow.
The migrants then simply waited for the so-called ‘taxi boat’ dinghy to ferry them across the Channel, shouting ‘England, England’ as it approached.
They would until recently have paid £1,500 to board, but prices have now plummeted to as little as £250.
A police officer speaking anonymously told the Mail the dinghy had first been spotted at 5.30am, half a mile inland in the very centre of the town of Gravelines, on a water channel to the sea.
The large squad of police had used teargas in a successful bid to drive a large group of migrants away from the sparsely occupied dinghy, as police video shown to us illustrated.
But the dinghy simply chugged off down the long channel to the sea – and cruised up and down the large Gravelines beach, in front of a giant nuclear power station.
The police relocated to the beach and again used teargas in their bid to stop more than 100 migrants getting on to the sand.
They could not stop them all. First one group of around 40, then a second, then a third, outflanked or ran between the groups of officers, as the clouds or acrid tear gas first dispersed in the gentle breeze.
The migrants were soon standing in the sea in three separate groups spread over half a mile of the huge beach.
Most of the police stayed back at the dunes hundreds of yards away, with just half a dozen or so nearing the surf simply to watch.
The dinghy ‘taxi boat’ took its time – circling and loitering within hailing distance of a ‘Gendarmerie Maritime’ speedboat, and with a larger coastguard ship and two non-military French government ships stationed a little further out to sea. None did anything to interfere.
They continued do nothing as the dinghy entirely came closer to the shore to pick up first one group of migrants, then, though perilously full, a second – with those climbing aboard whooping and cheering as they did so.
The dinghy eventually approached the third group in the sea – but evidently decided 18 more, including three women, was too many.
Only then did it slowly start to chug away from the beach – the gendarmerie speedboat still in attendance.
A police officer, resigned to the situation, told the Mail: ‘The gendarmerie boat is only there in case a migrant falls in the water.
‘Our men call out to them ‘Do you need any help?’ They always say no.
‘Until they reach British waters half way across that it – when your men ask ‘Do you need any help?’, the migrants immediately say yes so they can be taken safely to shore’
The officer was largely happy with his team’s operation this morning – but said it simply was not possible to stop migrants getting in to the boats.
‘We can’t have policeman stood in a line one metre apart all along the coast of northern France,’ he said.
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.
The scenes in Gravelines this morning come after Keir Starmer faced ridicule 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.
