More than 4,000 migrants have crossed the Channel this year, as people smugglers exploit the warmer weather to traffic people across in small boats.
The Home Office said that 190 people crossed in six small boats yesterday. The French intercepted 85 people in three boats, the department added.
It took the total to have crossed the Channel to 4,087 this year in 132 boats, almost triple the number that had arrived by this time last year. This figure was not reached last year until June, which suggests 2022 is likely to set another record for the number of migrant crossings. Last year 28,526 migrants reached the UK in this manner.
A total of 2,603 migrants have arrived in 81 boats in March alone. That is more than the 2,108 who made the dangerous 21-mile journey in January, February, March and April combined last year. It is almost triple the 831 who arrived in the entirety of March in 2021.
Tom Pursglove MP, the minister for tackling illegal migration, said: “The rise in dangerous Channel crossings is unacceptable. Not only are they an overt abuse of our immigration laws but they also impact on the UK taxpayer, risk lives and our ability to help refugees come to the UK via safe and legal routes. Rightly, the British public has had enough.
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“Through our Nationality and Borders Bill, we’re cracking down on people smugglers and fixing the broken system by making it a criminal offence to knowingly arrive in the UK illegally and introducing a maximum sentence of life imprisonment for those who facilitate illegal entry into our country.”
It came after MPs voted through a series of controversial plans to combat the crossings earlier this week, including criminalising all those found in the Channel without prior permission to enter the UK.
They also approved the government’s plans to process asylum seekers offshore, although ministers ruled out using Ascension Island, an overseas UK territory that lies 4,000 miles away in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean.
The island had been considered as a possible location to set up a processing centre as part of the government’s overhaul of the asylum system.
However, Pursglove said that it was “untrue” to suggest the island was an option but the government will continue to search for other locations after the government defeated attempts to remove the offshoring plan altogether.
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It was among a series of measures reinserted into the Nationality and Borders Bill by the government last night after they were removed by peers in the House of Lords last month.
