Barriers should be constructed in the sea off Belgium to stop people smugglers’ “taxi boats” reaching France to pick up Channel migrants, according to a Belgian police chief.
Christian de Ridder, the deputy police chief in Westkut, said the Belgian authorities had to find a way of stopping the people smugglers on the water if they were to prevent them from launching their taxi boats from Belgium.
The gangs have increasingly been launching taxi boats from Belgium, which then travel south towards Dunkirk to pick up migrants in the shallow waters before heading across the Channel to the UK.
France has successfully deployed barriers, constructed from buoys chained together, across rivers and canals in northern France to prevent the gangs from launching their taxi boats from inland waterways as they try to evade police.
Now, Mr de Ridder has suggested that the Belgians could adopt the same tactic at sea. “We have to stop them before they get to the UK. We have to find a way to stop them on the water. If we could put up a naval barrier so they don’t get into French waters, everything will stop,” he said.
Belgian authorities have been urged to find a way of stopping people smugglers on the water to prevent them from launching their taxi boats – Bartek Langer/via Getty Images
It is estimated that as many as one in five of the boats that bring migrants to the UK are launched from Belgium as the people-smuggling gangs adapt their tactics to evade the increasing number of French police and gendarmes deployed on France’s northern beaches around Dunkirk and Calais.
The naval barrier strategy has been borrowed from the US. The Texas state government has constructed 1,000-foot-long chains of buoys across the Rio Grande to prevent illegal migrants from crossing the river from Mexico.
The buoys in the huge Texan barriers are placed in “high-traffic” areas and rotate so that migrants cannot climb over them. They are also fastened to the river’s bottom, with nets below the waterline to prevent people from swimming underneath.
A string of buoys is assembled across the Rio Grande – Cheney Orr/Reuters
When he was immigration minister in the last Conservative government, Robert Jenrick was a champion of the tactic and visited El Paso on the Texas border with Mexico to view the barriers. He urged the French to do the same across their beaches as well as their inland waterways.
A chain of buoys on an estuary south of Calais
The French have instead begun using new maritime tactics where specially trained officers deploy their own vessels to intercept the taxi boats at sea before they arrive in the shallow waters of the beaches to pick up the migrants.
Under the new £660m Anglo-French agreement, the French have committed to expanding the tactics with a new vessel and an additional 20 maritime officers to intercept the taxi boats before they arrive at pre-determined locations to pick up migrants.
The full introduction of the tactic, which was promised last summer by Emmanuel Macron, has been long delayed because of concerns by police unions over the risks of drowning migrants during interceptions and officers’ legal or potential criminal liability for any deaths.
The adoption of sea tactics comes as it was confirmed that the number of migrants who have crossed the Channel since the first small boats were detected eight years ago has passed 200,000. The Home Office said 70 migrants crossed in a single boat on Friday, taking the total since 2018 to 200,013.
The arrivals take the small boat migrant total this year to more than 7,400, down 35 per cent on the 11,516 at the same point last year and down on the 8,790 in 2024.
A Home Office spokesman said: “This government is bearing down on small boat crossings. The Home Secretary has signed a landmark new deal with France to boost enforcement action on beaches and put people smugglers behind bars.
“This builds on joint work that has stopped over 42,000 illegal migrants attempting to cross the Channel since the election.
“We have removed or deported almost 60,000 people who were here illegally and are going further to remove the incentives that draw illegal migrants to this country.”