“Engine Fails: Coastguard Saves 68 Migrants Stranded in Channel as 183 More Reach UK”, You Won’t Believe Where They Are Coming From

The French coastguard rescued scores of migrants from a small boat off the Calais coast suffering from engine failure, as another 183 people reached the UK by crossing the English Channel.

Patrol boat Jacques Oudart Fourmentin (JOF) found the vessel carrying the migrants off the old Walde lighthouse near Calais on Friday, France’s Maritime Prefect confirmed.

The JOF launched two rigid inflatable boats to help those on board and carry them to safety.

The JOF rescued 68 migrants from the boat and dropped them off at the dock in Calais where they were taken care of by emergency services.’

The Maritime Prefect, who is the French government’s representative at sea, issued a stark warning to any would-be migrants thinking of attempting a Channel crossing. 

He said: ‘The Maritime Prefect of the English Channel and the North Sea warns anyone who plans to cross the English Channel about the risks involved.

This maritime sector is one of the busiest areas in the world, with more than 600 merchant ships transiting there per day and weather conditions are often difficult (120 days of wind greater than or equal to force 7 on average per year for example), it is therefore a particularly dangerous sector, especially in the middle of winter for precarious and overloaded boats.’ 

The rescue came as the Home Office confirmed that 183 people from three boats were brought ashore to the UK on Friday

This brings the total for the year so far to 890, which compares to 621 by the same point last year, 150 in 2023 and 771 in 2022.

A total of 36,816 people crossed the English Channel in 2024, which was an increase of 25 per cent from the 29,437 who arrived in 2023, according to the Home Office – but down by 20 per cent on the record 45,774 arrivals in 2022.

On January 11 a Syrian migrant became the first UK-bound migrant of the new year to die in the English Channel after being ‘crushed to death’ in an overcrowded small boat.

The unnamed man, who was in his 20s, was in a flimsy dinghy that was launched in the early hours of Saturday from a beach near Calais.

It was full of asylum seekers heading from France to England, but began to collapse in freezing cold seas and so turned back.

A Home Office spokesman said: ‘We all want to end dangerous small boat crossings, which threaten lives and undermine our border security.

The people-smuggling gangs do not care if the vulnerable people they exploit live or die, as long as they pay. We will stop at nothing to dismantle their business models and bring them to justice.’

In April 2024, a criminal enquiry was also launched following the deaths of five migrants including a little girl around Wimereux – a town 30km south of Calais.

The worst tragedy of this kind came in November 2021, when 27 migrants died after a dinghy sank while heading to the UK – the highest recorded number of deaths from a single incident.

French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau said of the tragedies: ‘Our government will intensify the fight against these mafias who are getting rich by organising these crossings of death.’

Because of adverse weather conditions, only 61 migrants arrived in the UK on small boats between January 1st and 10th this year, according to UK Home Office figures.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron have pledged to ‘strengthen cooperation’ to fight the people smugglers.

One of the new Government’s first acts in office was scrapping the Conservatives’ £715million Rwanda asylum deal, which was designed to deter migrants from crossing the Channel.

The cost of the UK’s asylum system has risen to £5 billion, the highest level of spending on record and up by more than a third in a year, according to separate Home Office data released in November last year.

However British PM Sir Kier Starmer has sought to blame his Conservative predecessors for the migration figures.

Sir Kier said: ‘A failure on this scale isn’t just bad luck, it isn’t a global trend or taking your eye off the ball, no this is a different order of failure. This happened by design not accident. Policies were reformed deliberately to liberalise immigration, Brexit was used for that purpose to turn Britain into a one nation experiment in open borders.’