More than 400 Channel migrants reached UK on same day five died
More than 400 migrants reached the UK in small boats on the day five people, including a seven-year-old girl, died while trying to cross the Channel.
The crossings included 58 migrants who refused to leave the boat on which the five were trampled or crushed to death on Tuesday.
The arrivals came hours after Parliament passed legislation aimed at getting the Government’s plan to deport migrants to Rwanda off the ground.
The dinghy on which the five people died was carrying 112 and set off from Wimereux at around 6am on Tuesday before getting into difficulties.
The girl, a woman and three men died in a crush after panic broke out when the engine cut out several hundred yards from the shore, police said.
Some 49 people were rescued but 58 others refused to leave the boat and continued their journey to the UK, with several other boats later embarking on the crossing.
Home Office figures show 402 people made the journey in seven boats that day after an eight-day break in activity in the Channel, suggesting an average of around 57 people per boat.
Young children and babies were among those seen being brought ashore in Dover, Kent, while witnesses described how crews carried someone on a stretcher from a lifeboat to an ambulance.
The latest crossings take the provisional total for the year so far to 6,667 – 20 per cent higher than this time last year (5,546) but slightly lower (down 0.4 per cent) than the 6,691 recorded at this stage in 2022.
Rishi Sunak said criminal gangs were exploiting the vulnerable and “packing more and more people into these unseaworthy dinghies”.
Speaking on Tuesday, he said: “This is what tragically happens when they push people out to sea and that’s why, for matters of compassion more than anything else, we must actually break this business model and end this unfairness of people coming to our country illegally.”
The National Crime Agency said it would be supporting a French investigation into the deaths with UK police and Border Force.
