The French Handed the Migrants Over – Then Asked for Their Life Jackets Back

On the day Starmer and Macron announce their ‘migrant deal’, the Telegraph joins Nigel Farage in the Channel to witness the French handing 78 migrants over to the British – though not before asking for their life jackets back. Here’s an excerpt.

In a calm sea under clear blue skies, a French navy warship on Thursday escorted a dinghy crammed with nearly 80 migrants to the Channel’s midpoint for a handover with UK Border Force. But not before demanding their life jackets back from the asylum seekers to reuse them on the next trip.

The ‘rescue’ of the 78 migrants took little more than 30 minutes.

It was almost as if it was routine, despite the dangers of crossing one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world with powerful tidal currents.

Of the 78 migrants who made it, 74 were men. There was just one woman on board with three children.

No more than 300 yards away, on a fishing boat bobbing in the sun-specked water, was Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, marking the day when Sir Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron, the French President, announced their new deal to halt the crossings, in his own pointed political way.

“This is a classic day on the English Channel over the past five years when the sea is calm,” he said. “We are witnessing a crime but everyone seems happy.

“The French navy is happy. Border Force is happy. And what we saw was how calm and controlled it was, almost as if the two governments have agreed it is normal practice and can continue.”

The maritime operation began before dawn, when the French warship spotted the migrants’ flimsy overloaded dinghy with its balsa wood bottom as it left Wissant beach on the northern French coast. For the next 12 miles, the naval vessel escorted the boat ready for the migrants’ transfer to Hurricane, the Border Force cutter.

At a steady two to three knots, the boat made its slow progress through the calm but cold waters to the Channel’s midpoint by 7.30am before appearing to lose power. At that point, a rigid inflatable boat with sailors on board sped from the warship across the sea to recover the 40 life jackets earlier handed to the migrants by the French.

Observers said it was the first time they had seen life jackets recovered before the migrants had been towed and fully embarked on Hurricane. There was, however, no shortage of rescue backup with two British rigid inflatable boats accompanying the Border Force cutter.

Six vessels were involved in the handover, accompanied by a drone and at one point a helicopter, at a cost of tens of thousands of pounds. The sixth vessel was a large tug-like offshore supply boat with a winch, which lifted the empty dripping dinghy from the water to be taken back to Dover for forensic examination and storage. …

Mr Farage, who first highlighted the crisis by going out on the Channel over five years ago, said: “Nine years ago, the country voted decisively to take back control of its borders, to have an immigration policy that meant we could choose who came here.

“The most blatant betrayal of that is what you’ve just witnessed with me in the Channel: one vessel, 74 young undocumented males about whose history we know nothing entering the UK.”

In an interview with the Telegraph, he urged Sir Keir to declare a national security emergency to allow the Government to suspend the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and Refugee Convention. This, he said, would then enable ministers to intern all illegal migrants in secure, converted former military camps.

“I would definitely intern everybody that arrives on the basis that not all, but some of them, will be dangerous. In recent weeks, we’ve seen suspected terrorists who came via Channel arrested. We’ve had the Casey report telling us child sexual grooming is carried on by people like this,” said Mr Farage.

“There might be some people here who are coming here from horrible backgrounds, but the first job of the Government is to protect the nation. The only way you stop this is by making people know that it’s not worth paying the trafficker out because you will be deported.

“And that’s what Rwanda was about. The problem is it couldn’t work because of Strasbourg courts, British courts, and the incorporation of ECHR into British law. It was never going to be a goer but the thinking behind it was right.”

One of his first acts, if he became Prime Minister – as the polls suggest is a possibility – would be to quit the ECHR. He declined to back Donald Trump-style mass deportations, but said there would be “significant” numbers and not just to “safe” countries but also nations like Afghanistan.

As a “last stop” he said he was prepared to bring in the Navy to forcibly return migrants at sea to France. “If we can’t solve this through other means, in the end the Royal Marines will have to take the boats back to France,” he said.

“Under the Law of the Sea, if lives are in danger, you can take them back to the safest place. It would be the ‘last stop’ measure. It would cause a diplomatic incident, as it did with the Australians in 2012 but it does work.”

Worth reading in full.