Smuggler gangs are offering migrants ‘gold, silver and bronze’ package deals to cross the Channel – with the cheapest costing less than £1000.
Traffickers take advantage of vulnerable asylum seekers desperately fleeing their homelands by offering the paid-for arrangement at a camp in Calais.
The most expensive package, gold, costs £10,000 and means you get a larger boat with better conditions, less other people and lifejackets, as reported by The Sun.
One migrant who is hoping to make the journey in the next few days told the newspaper: ‘The prices vary. It depends on the size of the boat and how many people are inside.
‘People come around offering the crossings. We pay and keep in touch. They tell us when and where to go and pick us up.
‘I’m looking forward to it. Britain is like heaven to me!’
A group of people thought to be migrants crossing the Channel in a small boat headed in the direction of Dover, Kent, last Monday
A baby was among at least 15 migrants to be intercepted while crossing the Channel to the UK yesterday
The silver package costs between £3,000 and £5,000, and means you get a worse boat. And the lowest package, bronze, means you pay a prize of £1,000 or less and are often crammed onto a stolen boat.
It comes as more than 1,000 migrants have arrived in the past 10 days, with 15, including a baby, picked up along the coast of Dover, Kent, yesterday.
On Saturday five vessels were brought to the UK carrying 65 people.
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.
A group of people thought to be migrants are brought into Dover, Kent, onboard a Border Force vessel following a number of small boat incidents in the Channel earlier yesterday
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.
Migrant camps have been dismantled in Calais, forcing refugees to move to more remote areas before making the crossing.
Home Secretary Priti Patel has sparked a row with her French counterparts, however, after she said migrants are crossing the Channel to Britain because they believe France is a ‘racist country’ where they may be ‘tortured’.
A boat that took a group of Iranian migrants across the Channel on August 12
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.’
Government sources have 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.