Since the 1st of January, the maritime prefecture of the English Channel and the North sea has recorded 342 attempts or crossings involving 4192 migrants.
Despite the risk and the mobilization of important means of surveillance, the attempts of crossings clandestine of the English Channel between France and England is increasing, a phenomenon linked to networks of smugglers, more and more organized.
Since the 1st of January, the maritime prefecture of the English Channel and the North sea has recorded 342 attempts or crossings involving 4192 migrants, compared with 203 attempts or crossings involving 2294 migrants on the whole of 2019.
A success rate between 60% and 70%
The authorities are sometimes “dozens of people attempt the crossing in a single day” and even 232 on 30 July, confirms Philippe Sabatier, deputy prosecutor of Boulogne-sur-Mer. A situation that has sparked a Sunday, the wrath of the british government, and led to a meeting in Paris this Tuesday.
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“On the ground, this translates into large flows of migrants, there are a lot of new comers and also people who disappear, a part of which happens to go through”, says François Guennoc, vice-president of the Auberge des migrants, who are currently “between 1000 and 1200 migrants” distributed over the area of Calais-Coquelles, where the quantities are regular.
Even if the summer weather encourages more departures, “we would never have thought that the crossings would take on such a scale, although they have experienced a steady growth since October 2018”, he noted. But “it works because the success rate of crossings is between 60% and 70% which is still significant.”
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the prefecture of The Pas-de-Calais displays, on the other hand, with the AFP, other results: “from January to July 2020, the crossings prevented and arrests of migrants have been multiplied by more than 5, compared to the same period in 2019. For July 2020, we have prevented more than 10 times of crossings in July 2019 and 4 times more boats and materials were discovered in the dunes”.
At an average 3,000 euros per person, smugglers are boarding the migrants on unseaworthy vessels, the majority of the tires purchased on sites of the announcement, but also in Belgium, Germany or the netherlands. “When weather conditions permit, they deliver the boat on the shore and then ensure that the clients have joined the place of craft (…) It is a mode of passage to be particularly lucrative and easy to organize,” explains Sabatier.
networks of smugglers, “very organized”
in the Face of this upsurge, the authorities have implemented an important means of land and sea. Since January, “at the court of Boulogne-sur-Mer, four sectors related to sea passages have been dismantled by the BMR (Brigade mobile police search at the border) of Coquelles corresponding to the seven convicted persons,” says the prosecutor.
But the difficulties are many: the”vastness of the area to be covered, the conditions for intervention difficult,” including to “identify migrants at night on the beaches, hills, as well as various”, the “willingness of migrants to pass at all costs, despite the risk”, or the “violence of the smugglers to force them to embark, in particular in “overloading the boat”, lists Sabatier.
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And according to François Guennoc, smuggling networks, “very organized”, use of “new techniques”, “in addition to the smuggling by trucks usual” and “including the use of inflatables weakly motorized on board which we did not hesitate to cram an excess of passengers who know nothing of navigation.”
For Claire Millot, general secretary of the association Salam, “which grows to departures in these conditions, it is the way in which they are constantly being hunted down, and their conditions of life intolerable”. “There are more and more of the world that’s coming, because people know that it’s happening.”
“Are repeated on all tones that it is extremely dangerous, but knowing that they do not kill people, they want to spend, even with means implausible, such as boards, paddle or canoes…”
