The number of migrants crossing the English Channel illegally into England since the start of the year has topped 20,000, heading for a new record high despite successive UK government plans to try to end it, figures showed on Sunday by the Ministry of Defence.
607 people made the dangerous crossing of this passage with very heavy maritime traffic on Saturday in small boats, one of the highest figures this year.
According to the count of the PA agency, the total since the beginning of the year is now 20,017 against only against 11,300 on the same date last year.
Over the whole of 2021, 28,500 people thus arrived in the United Kingdom, marking a new record since the surge in these crossings in 2018 in the face of the increasing lockdown of the French port of Calais and the Channel Tunnel.
A recent British parliamentary report estimated that the total could reach 60,000 this year despite repeated promises from the British Conservative government, which has made the subject a priority since Brexit, pay millions to France and then help it to strengthen surveillance of the coasts. and multiplies the measures to harden the reception of migrants.