A daily drama.
At least 828 migrants crossed the Channel on Saturday to reach the English coast, the British Home Office said on Monday evening, a new daily record bringing the number of people who have made the dangerous crossing this year to more than 12,000.
The previous daily record - 592 arrivals - in August is largely exceeded.
If the ministry does not communicate a cumulative report, according to the count of the British press agency PA, more than 12,400 people have made since the beginning of the year the crossing of the strait, one of the busiest in the world, to aboard small boats, which is much more than during the whole of last year (more than 8,000).
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The Interior Ministry said it had, with the collaboration of the French authorities, prevented more than 10,000 attempted crossings this year and made nearly 300 arrests since July 2020. On Saturday, 193 people were intercepted before the crossing, according to London.
In France, the maritime prefecture of the Channel and the North Sea had indicated on Saturday that 102 migrants had been rescued at sea in the Strait of Pas-de-Calais as they tried to reach England.
Frictions between London and Paris
The question of crossings is regularly the source of friction between London and Paris, but the United Kingdom pledged at the end of July to pay France 62.7 million euros in 2021-2022 to finance the strengthening of the presence of French law enforcement agencies on the coast. The British Parliament began before the summer recess to pass Home Secretary Priti Patel's reform of the asylum system, marking a tightening promised under Brexit.
Presented by the minister as "fair but firm" but denounced by associations for the defense of human rights, it aims to discourage illegal immigration and plans to treat asylum seekers differently depending on whether they have arrived in the country legally or illegally. The bill plans to increase to four years, from six months currently, the prison sentence incurred by migrants seeking to enter the country illegally and bring to life imprisonment - from the current 14 years imprisonment - the maximum penalty incurred by smugglers.
