UK Signs New Deal With France to Curb Illegal Channel Crossings.

UK Signs New Deal With France to Curb Illegal Channel Crossings.

The UK on Monday agreed on a new deal with France to stop illegal immigrants from crossing into the UK on small boats.

It comes after 40,000 people so far have successfully made the journey across the English Channel this year.

British Home Secretary Suella Braverman signed the deal with her French counterpart, interior minister Gerald Darmanin, raising the UK’s payment to France from £55 million ($64.5 million) to £63 million ($74 million) a year.

Over the next five months, France will ramp up beach patrols, deploying 40 percent more officers, the governments said in a joint statement.

The funding will also go towards border patrol equipment and migrant centers.

“Cutting edge surveillance technology, drones, detection dog teams, CCTV, and helicopters” will help detect and prevent crossings from the French coasts, the statement said.

Some investment will support illegal migrant reception and removal centres to prevent people who enter France via the Mediterranean route from embarking on journeys across the English Channel, hold those who are caught trying to leave France for the UK, and support their voluntary returns to their countries of origin “where appropriate, safe, and legal.”

The Franco–British deal will also see British and French border forces embedding officers in each other’s teams to increase understanding of the threat.

A task force will be formed to focus on “reversing the recent rise in Albanian nationals and organised crime groups exploiting illegal migration routes in to Western Europe and the UK.”

A UK–France Joint Monitoring Committee will keep the measures and their implementation under review.

The ministers said they expect to speak with neighbouring countries soon to “ensure a multilateral approach” on illegal migration, including on disrupting traffickers’ operations before they reach France.

They are also set to meet their Group of Seven nations’ counterparts in Frankfurt later this week.

The ministers said the two countries’ existing deal has already seen the prevention of more than 23,000 small boat crossings in 2021 and more than 30,000 crossings this year, and the dismantling of 55 organised crime groups and over 500 arrests.

Downing Street said the increase in beach patrols in northern France would “increase early detection,” while the presence of UK staff in French control rooms would boost understanding of the “threat” at hand and help inform deployments.

But Enver Solomon, chief executive of the Refugee Council, claimed the deal fails to address the factors behind people choosing to put themselves at risk trying to reach Britain the first place and will therefore “do little to end the crossings.”

He called for a focus on creating more “safe routes” and working with the European Union and other countries to “share responsibility” for the “global challenge,” while urging the government to do “far more” to reduce the backlogs in the current asylum system.

“The government must take a more comprehensive approach and create an orderly, fair and humane asylum system that recognises that the vast majority of those taking dangerous journey are refugees escaping for their lives,” he said.

“It needs to face up to the fact it is a global issue which will not be resolved by enforcement measures alone.”

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