Royal Navy called in to help Border Force police the Channel for the first time this year

The Royal Navy has been called in to help Border Force police the Channel for the first time this year as 1,000 migrants crossed into England in 10 days.

On Saturday evening the Ministry of Defence announced that it was sending a specialist team to provide support for ‘the daily running of Border Force operations’ after another 90 people made the crossing on Friday.

The Royal Navy has not been employed to help stop such crossings since January 2019.

The deployment comes after 10 consecutive days of landings, with refugees seen possing for selfies as they wait to be picked up in the English Channel. 

A task-force of around a dozen officers will help to plan and organise operations while working alongside Border Force officials, according to The Sunday Telegraph. 

‘Civilian authorities are not used to fast paced, large scale and constantly changing situations in the same way as the military. That’s what we do,’ an MoD source told the newspaper.

The Government has been facing mounting pressure to address the large numbers of people arriving on UK shores across the channel.

So far, this year has seen 4,500 people have made the dangerous journey this year. In contrast, the whole last year saw 1,800 people cross, and fewer than 400 in 2018.

Across The Channel in Calais, French officials have removed more established refugee camps, forcing migrants to move to more remote areas. 

Home Secretary Priti Patel has said migrants are crossing the Channel to Britain because they believe France is a ‘racist country’ where they may be ‘tortured’. 

According to reports, Ms Patel made her comments in a conference call with Conservative MPs concerned about the recent upsurge in numbers attempting the dangerous voyage in small boats.

Government sources said she had made clear that she did not share those views and was simply explaining the ‘pull factors’ which led so many migrants to risk their lives in this way.

One MP on the call told The Sun on Sunday: ‘Priti was asked why the migrants are so desperate to leave France and come here. She told us some believe racism to be an issue.

‘They claim they feel discriminated against when, for example, looking for work in France. Others claimed they feared being tortured if they stayed in France or Germany.

‘Priti stressed that she didn’t believe any of this to be true. She was merely trying to explain the pull factors.’

The news comes after immigration minister Chris Philp promised a ‘new, comprehensive action plan’ to stem the latest surge in crossings after talks with French officials in Paris on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) responded to the Home Office’s formal request for help by sending in RAF planes.

Three have been sent up into the skies above the Channel this week so far to carry out surveillance and help the coastguard and Border Force spot emerging crossing attempts.

Defence Secretary Ben Wallace initially authorised the use of the Atlas A-400M on Monday and since approved flights by a Shadow R1 on Tuesday and Thursday while a P-8 Poseidon was enlisted on Wednesday.

The costs of the operations and decisions on whether to provide any other support are still being finalised, the MoD said.

It comes after Calais mayor Natacha Bouchart described sending in the navy to French broadcasters as a ‘declaration of maritime war’.

Home Secretary Priti Patel last year pledged that the migrant crossings would be an ‘infrequent phenomenon’ by now and has since insisted she is working to make the route ‘completely unviable’.

Priti Patel in racist French storm: Home Secretary enrages Paris by telling Tory MPs migrants want to cross Channel to escape prejudice 

By Brendan Carlin and Abul Taher for the Mail on Sunday

Priti Patel sparked a diplomatic row last night by claiming migrants were crossing the Channel to escape ‘racist’ France, where they feared they would be tortured.

The Home Secretary’s inflammatory remarks, in a private meeting with Tory MPs, infuriated French politicians. One blasted: ‘Madam Patel is not a politician who does much thinking.’

But the row came as Europe’s top judges condemned France for ‘degrading and inhumane’ treatment of asylum seekers in forcing them to sleep rough for months in ‘constant fear of being attacked or robbed’. 

Tory MPs taking part in the Zoom conference call with Ms Patel also said she claimed to have been frustrated in her efforts to crack down on the Channel migrant crisis by No 10 – although both sides denied that last night. 

The private web chat with the Home Secretary came amid mounting anger on the Tory backbenches over how the Government was handling the migrant crisis. One MP claimed Ms Patel had told them: ‘France is a racist country. They would rather come to England.’

Last night, Government sources strongly denied that, insisting that the Home Secretary had only been passing on what migrants had been saying about France.

One stressed: ‘Priti made clear these were migrants’ views – not hers’, adding that the Home Secretary thought claims of possible torture if they returned to France were nonsense, pushed by activist lawyers.

One MP on the call told The Sun on Sunday: ‘Priti was asked why the migrants are so desperate to leave France and come here. She told us some believe racism to be an issue.

‘They claim they feel discriminated against when, for example, looking for work in France. Others claimed they feared being tortured if they stayed in France or Germany.

‘Priti stressed that she didn’t believe any of this to be true. She was merely trying to explain the pull factors.’

However, another MP on the call was quoted as saying that she had left an impression that she did believe the French were racist.

‘She was calling them racist and she is right. They are more racist than us,’ the MP told The Sunday Times.

But an MP from France’s opposition Republicans party raged: ‘Madam Patel has caused a lot of upset already with absurd and untrue claims about our forces not stopping immigrant boats. Wherever these latest claims about racism came from, Madam Patel should not be spreading them in such a callous manner.’ 

A politician from President Emmanuel Macron’s ruling LREM party said: ‘Hateful claims are not a healthy part of politics, but this woman seems to spread them all the time.’

But the French MPs’ comments come after the European Court of Human Rights ordered the Paris government to pay a total of £32,000 compensation to three asylum seekers for failing to provide them with basics like food and shelter. 

Charity workers have said that French riot police regularly raid migrants’ camps, slash their tents with knives and confiscate their belongings and medicine. Refugees say police regularly assault them, and video footage of officers dragging migrants off buses has been posted online.

Away from the ‘racism’ row, one MP on the Zoom chat said Ms Patel expressed frustration that she was being hampered in tackling the migrant crisis. She is said to have told MPs: ‘I could see this coming. 

I have been on about this since I was appointed last summer’ – but claimed the issue had not been given priority. ‘I said around the Cabinet table we should be sitting through the summer recess to get legislation done,’ she is said to have told MPs . ‘And I was in a minority.’

The Home Secretary also reportedly said she had been thwarted in a bid to give more publicity to repatriation flights, which would send out the message the Government was getting tough on illegal migrants. 

She is said to have given the impression it was either Boris Johnson or his top aide, Dominic Cummings, who had stood in her way. However, Government sources insisted Ms Patel was expressing frustration with legal constraints.

One MP suggested Ms Patel was ‘covering herself’ as she was getting a ‘hard time’ from colleagues over the crisis.

The backbencher complained: ‘It looks incompetent and is incompetent that we can’t stop rubber dinghies coming across the Channel when people are being told they can’t go on holiday to Spain.’ 

Last week Ms Patel is understood to have told France they would not get the extra £30 million they sought to tackle the migrant problem unless they performed better.

The MP said there was also concern about asylum seekers being sent to hotels around the country. Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage has said he will today release a video on Twitter which will ’embarrass Priti Patel’ by showing asylum seekers being housed in a hotel in her Essex constituency.

Last night, the Home Office said: ‘The Home Secretary is clearly frustrated by the increasing number of small boats crossing the Channel’ and said that, by the end of the Brexit transition period, the right legislation would be in place.

Mystery British kingpin known as ‘The Banker’ controls multi-million pound cross-Channel people smuggling ring

By Max Aitchison, Abul Taher and Tim Finan for the Mail on Sunday  

A multi-million-pound cross-Channel smuggling racket is being masterminded by a UK-based criminal known as ‘The Banker’.

Details of the shadowy Godfather figure emerged during the French trial of a gang of Afghans who smuggled migrants into Britain on small boats and in the back of lorries. The revelation comes as new analysis showed more than 1,000 migrants crossed the Channel in the ten days up to last Thursday.

A court in Boulogne-sur-Mer heard how three smugglers, who charged an average of £3,000 for each ‘passenger’, were part of a sophisticated operation that used encrypted mobile-phone apps to pass information and collect payment.

Janmeer Ahmadzai, 28, his brother Amadjai Shanawaz, 29, and Kochai Juma Gul, 25 were in constant contact with associates in Britain, including an unidentified kingpin known as ‘Le Banquier’, the court was told.

Judge Vincent Naegelin said orders to cram boats and lorries with migrants arrived by phone from ‘Le Banquier’ and evidence showed he controlled the gang’s finances.

The French national police conducted a year-long investigation into the Calais-based gang, secretly tracking their movements, photographing them and bugging their mobile phones. They arrested the men last month at a car park near the city’s main hospital, close to the notorious Jungle migrant camp.

The three men were found guilty of aiding illegal immigration into Britain. Gul was given a five-year prison sentence, Ahmadzai was jailed for four years and his brother for one year. Details of the case emerged as at least five more boatloads of migrants, including a reportedly pregnant woman and a child, arrived in Dover yesterday.

Another dinghy carrying six migrants was intercepted by a Border Force vessel about 1,000 yards off the coast before being escorted to Dover.

Throughout yesterday morning, dozens of migrants wearing lifejackets and wrapped in pale blue blankets were processed by officials wearing masks and gloves. Each had their temperature taken as part of checks for coronavirus. One frail, elderly man was seen leaving a Border Force vessel using a cane before the deck was sprayed with disinfectant.

In total, 1,004 migrants were brought ashore by the Border Force between August 4 and August 13, talking the total this year to 4,511.

That figure does not include those who were detained on shore or those who evaded capture and is more than twice the 1,900 seized during the whole of last year. Another 48 migrants were detained on Friday. Among them was a group of 11, including a distressed woman and a teenager who appeared to be her son, who were stopped by police on the busy A20 near the port.

It later emerged that Tony Benson, a British expat living in Lens, about 60 miles from Calais, may have provided the boat they used for their crossing.

Posting on Facebook, he wrote: ‘Yes, I gave it to them and wished them luck, and do you know why? I am well off, my kids and grandkids don’t go without, they have a house, a family, a school to go to, and I don’t have to worry about whether or not they will come home to find they don’t have one.’

Yesterday, a series of seemingly new inflatable rubber dinghies were seen being towed into Dover harbour after the Border Force had picked up their passengers. At least one was missing its outboard motor. Migrants often remove them when they are in sight of the English coast, so they cannot be turned back to France.

Favourable weather in the Channel and a crackdown by the French authorities on the migrant camps has encouraged more people to make the journey, despite Home Secretary Priti Patel’s vow to make the route ‘unviable’.