In the three years that Annie Daniels has been a charity worker in the migrant camps of northern France, she has never seen them as busy as they are now.
“Last year, we would typically have around 600 people living in this camp,” said Daniels, 58, a volunteer with the charity Salam, speaking at a food distribution station at Grande-Synthe, home to one of the biggest camps. “Last week there were more than double that number. When we came to give out food, there was a crush of people coming to the station desperate for something to eat and fighting began to break out.”
Over recent months, politicians on both sides of the Channel have redoubled their efforts to get a handle on small boat crossings.
Annie Daniels at the Grande-Synthe migrant camp
PETER MACDIARMID FOR THE TIMES
In Britain, a “one in, one out” policy was introduced last month with tougher conditions on those who wish to remain. In France, new policing tactics were adopted and a proposal that would enable officers to intercept boats at sea is under consideration.
Before dawn on Tuesday, The Times watched a riot police unit scuffling with a group of migrants, many of whom were accompanied by young children, attempting to reach the beach at Gravelines.
Equipped with tear gas and riot shields, the officers — known by the acronym CRS — are more commonly deployed to deal with public disturbances such as mass protests, natural disasters and terror attacks. Here, they are bolstering the ranks of a local gendarmerie that is struggling to deal with the situation.
And yet despite the policy, the policing and the rhetoric, the migrants remain undeterred, determined to make it to the destination that many have travelled thousands of miles to reach.
Volunteers for Salam clear litter from the camp
PETER MACDIARMID FOR THE TIMES
On Saturday, 895 people crossed the Channel in 12 boats followed by 403 people on Sunday and 70 on Monday. At least three boats made it across the Channel on Tuesday for a fourth day in a row of crossings, taking the total for this year to nearly 34,000.
They included a boat measuring about 12 metres, which is one of the largest dinghies seen in the Channel. It was carrying an estimated 80 migrants, although this was not as many as the 125 who arrived in a boat on Saturday, the largest number recorded in a single vessel.
Mike Tapp, a Home Office minister, said people smugglers were increasing the size of the boats because of a fall in supply caused by more successful law enforcement raids. He told the BBC: “We’re having success upstream in intercepting the actual procurement of boat parts, which is why they’re using bigger ones.”
However, Tuesday Reitano, managing director of the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime, suggested it was mainly a “profit-making strategy”.
A group including a man carrying a child wrapped in a blanket try to reach the canal where they can find a small boat
PETER MACDIARMID FOR THE TIMES
In the coming weeks, many more are expected to attempt the crossing as desperation grows before winter, which will bring with it peril both at sea and in the camps. “We cannot continue to live here like this,” said one man, 26, from Eritrea, travelling with his wife who arrived at Grande-Synthe two weeks ago. “It is so cold at night and we do not have enough blankets. There is not enough food for us all and we are going hungry each day.”
Usman, 29, from Afghanistan, has made six aborted crossings in the past two weeks, all of which were thwarted by police. He has been told by his smuggler contact that he has a place on board another attempted crossing on Wednesday morning. “It’s all luck,” he said, but added that he believed there were fewer police on duty on Saturday and Sunday making weekend crossings more likely to succeed.
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Like several others The Times met in the camp, the man said he had initially sought to stay in France but claims he was told he could not do so and that he should move on to Britain.
Asked whether he was aware of tougher conditions on migrants seeking indefinite leave to remain in Britain, announced a day earlier by Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, he said he was not, but added: “Everyone knows Britain is a very helping country.”
Migrants remain undeterred
GARETH FULLER/PA
The growing number of migrants making it across the Channel is in part down to bigger boats. According to French officials, the number of migrants per boat has increased from an average of 53 migrants per boat last year to 59 this year. Saturday’s boat carrying 125 migrants broke the previous record of 106, which had been held since August.
Xavier Delrieu, head of OLTIM, the French national police unit specialising in organised immigration crime, said that a big part of the problem for law enforcement agencies was their inability to break the smugglers’ supply chain.
“All the storage sites are in Germany, and we haven’t been effective because there are legal barriers,” Delrieu told the news site InfoMigrants last week. “The Germans can’t launch investigations on networks that traffic nautical material; this doesn’t constitute a crime. They have a limited approach to the notion of criminal organisations. We won’t be able to resolve the small boat problem until we can launch investigations in Germany on the storage of boats.”