Migrants crossing the English Channel threaten to drown their own children

New reports have emerged indicating that illegal migrants in the process of crossing the English Channel often threaten to drown themselves or their children when they are intercepted by French vessels seeking to return them to their camps in France.

Migrants often cross the Channel in flimsy inflatable dinghies, putting themselves in danger in their effort to pursue what they consider to be richer pickings for illegals in the United Kingdom than they find in the camps along the French coast. When these migrants are intercepted by vessels flying the French flag, they often threaten to either throw themselves or their children overboard in order to avoid being rescued –and hence returned to France — or turned back, according to a report by The Times.

When this happens, the French vessels are forced to withdraw and merely trail the boats until they are intercepted by UK Border Force ships. The migrants are no doubt aware that once they are met by British security personnel they will be escorted to the UK and treated as asylum-seekers rather than returned to France.

The number of Channel crossings by illegal migrants has been dramatically rising this year. More than 1,700 migrants have successfully crossed to the UK so far this year — as compared to 1,890 during all of 2019. Of those, only 155 have been returned to France since the beginning of 2019.
 
Priti Patel, the UK’s Home Secretary, promised to make such crossings an “infrequent phenomena” by this spring, but has clearly failed. She is ordering her staff to look for new ways to deal with the crisis, including increasing the powers of the Home Office to return migrants to their points of origin.

A new record was set last month when 90 migrants were intercepted in the English Channel during a single day. They are continuing to come — and are welcomed into the UK — despite the fact that cases of the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) are being reported in the migrant camps along the French coast, as previously reported by Voice of Europe. The UK nevertheless remains closed to legal international travel due to the pandemic.

Source:
Voice Of Europe