Migrant crisis: More than NINE THOUSAND have crossed English Channel in 2024
More than 9,000 small boat migrants have crossed the English Channel so far this year, GB News can reveal.
Official Home Office figures show that, 250 migrants made the illegal journey in two small boats since Monday.
Those arrivals took the total tally for 2024 to 8,796.
However, GB News can confirm that another three small boats arrived on Thursday.
The Border Force vessel Ranger brought 54 migrants to Dover harbour just after 8am today.
Just three hours later, the British border patrol vessel Volunteer brought another 74 migrants to the Border Force processing centre in Dover.
On Thursday evening, another Border Force vessel arrived in the port with 76 migrants on board.
Including today’s arrivals, the total number of small boat migrants who have crossed from France since the New Year is 9,030.
That figure is 35 per cent higher than the 6,691 who crossed the Channel at the same point last year.
The latest arrivals come as GB News revealed a Home Office U-turn on the publication of the number of small boat migrants being prevented from making the illegal journey by French police.
The Government has long produced data sets on the number of small boat migrants reaching the UK.
Just last week, the Home Office began publishing a new set of figures alongside the arrivals total.
That data showed another two columns with numbers of “Migrants prevented” and “Events prevented” relating to the activities of the French in stopping small boat launches.
The figures revealed that French authorities had stopped more than 1,000 migrants from launching boats in multiple incidents since last week.
However, today the Home Office added a message under their latest arrivals figures stating: “After consultation with the French, we are pausing the publication of daily prevention data until further notice.
“We will continue to publish daily statistics on boat arrivals, by individuals and boats.”
The U-turn will be seen as embarrassing for the Home Office, which wanted to show the level of cooperation between French and UK authorities, and how effective police in France are being in preventing small boat launches.
The move to publish the French data had been criticised by migrant charities and human rights groups, who claimed the figures were “unreliable and misleading”.
The Home Office later clarified that the figures were estimates based on an “operational snapshot collected by the French authorities.”
One maritime source told GB News: “This about-turn is obviously embarrassing for the Government.
“Clearly they wanted to show the unity and progress in the UK’s relationship with their French counterparts. But it has been little more than a week, and they’ve had to abandon that.”
The source also pointed to the fact that all of the previous week’s figures on French migrant preventions had “suddenly disappeared”.
“This is not just the Home Office no longer providing these figures going forward. They’ve removed all the figures since last week. That might point to a disagreement with the French over the use of that data. Either way, it’s an embarrassing U-turn.”
Commenting on the latest arrivals, a Home Office spokesperson said: “The unacceptable number of people who continue to cross the Channel demonstrates exactly why we must get flights to Rwanda off the ground as soon as possible.
“We remain committed to building on the successes that saw arrivals drop by more than a third last year, including tougher legislation and agreements with international partners in order to save lives and stop the boats.”