Migrants pile into dinghies to cross Channel to Dover as 'panic setting in' before Brexit deadline hits

Seven men are huddled, cold and wet, in a car park at Samphire Hoe near Dover talking to a Coastguard Search and Rescue officer. Four have turquoise blankets wrapped tightly around their shoulders by the time an ambulance arrives on Friday lunchtime to check if they have any injuries or hypothermia.

On the rocks of a beach below, a dinghy with a small engine is deflating. Two lifejackets and a red fuel tank float limply inside it. A black glove and coat have been abandoned nearby on the pebble beach, which is overlooked by Dover’s white cliffs.

The men are Iranian, and have travelled overnight in their inflatable craft through thick fog across the English Channel, the latest migrants to arrive during an unprecedented week which has seen 55 caught by border patrol, in what is thought to be a rush ahead of the March Brexit deadline.  

Most travelled by boat across the Dover Strait, mainly from Iran and including a four-year-old boy, with seven of the suspected migrants discovered on a lorry from France. 

The Coastguard responded to six separate incidents in three days in a surge of crossings that has never been seen before. New smuggling networks into the UK run by criminal gangs and the impending arrival of winter, as well as the Brexit deadline which it is assumed will harden the border, are all thought to be reasons for the increase.  

“It is always surprising to see people come those distances across the sea in a little boat like that,” says a Coastguard officer who is on the beach near the abandoned dinghy. “It is not meant to be a seafaring boat."

He adds: "Even with my experience, I wouldn’t attempt to cross in a boat like that. But it’s been happening a fair amount recently.”

The sea is calm, but the air is heavy with fog; conditions that most would call treacherous. An RNLI lifeboat and Border Force rib circling just off the shore are barely visible.

The fog, which descended on to the cliffs of Dover and shores of France on Thursday evening, offered the migrants cover, but also made them invisible to the passing ferries that transport millions of people per year. 

“The fog and darkness mean the French won’t have seen them,” says another Coastguard officer at the scene. “They’ll have travelled through the night for up to seven hours."

Andy Roberts, a retired Coastguard officer who has worked in the area for 30 years, says it is only a matter of time before someone dies. 

“A tragedy will happen, it’s inevitable,” he says. “They have been very lucky so far."

There have been no known casualties in British waters to date, but a body was discovered off the coast of Boulogne last week.

“The Dover Strait is the busiest shipping thoroughfare in the world, with over 400 commercial traffic movements a day,” says Roberts. “There’s always the risk of being run over and with today’s thick fog they would easily be lost.”

He adds: “In the last few weeks 90 per cent of the people who have been rescued have been young, fit men. If it was children and the elderly they would already be dead.”

The rise in the number of people attempting to reach the UK by boat has worried local fishermen, who say they must now watch for precarious dinghies, as well as obstacles such as driftwood.

Fisherman Matt Coker, 38, rescued four Iranian migrants, including one woman, from the choppy waters between England and France back in June. He was fishing for cod, pollock and bass with a dozen crew when he spotted what he thought was a gill net.

“As we got closer I could see it wasn’t actually the flag of a gill net, but people holding up oars, waving them and frantically panicking,” he says. “They had been drifting for a few days in a three-man, blow-up pleasure dinghy.”

After bringing them on board, Coker told the migrants to remove their clothes and dry them in the sun. The woman was being sick and one of the men was coughing up blood.

“I felt sorry for them,” Coker recalls. “I gave them some First Aid, a couple of cups of tea and some fresh water.” He phoned the Coastguard who met them at the port with officials from Border Force.

Coker was reminded of the rescue last week as he watched a lifeboat tow a “tiny” French fishing boat, no more than six metres long, into port. Ten Iranian men clambered off it and into the custody of Border Force agents. Their first sight of the UK was a marina that normally houses fishing boats and personal yachts, with names such as “Wine Time”. This week, it is home to two Border Force ribs and a stolen French fishing trawler.

“The boat was really listing over and low down in the water, to the point that it actually looked like it was sinking,” says Coker. “There isn’t enough Border Force support. I’ve seen them a lot more than ever before but they’re overstretched.”

Echoing Lieutenant Ingrid Parrot, spokeswoman for the French Maritime Prefecture, Coker says he is worried things could get worse in the months before the UK leaves the EU. 

"It has stepped up massively since the Brexit vote," he says. "The closer we get to March, the more people are starting to panic."

Roberts agrees that there should be 24-hour presence of Border Force agents in the sea around Dover. “This is the shortest crossing from France to the UK and it shouldn’t be a case of ‘we haven’t got enough cover’,” he says. “We have a minimal number of official boats compared with the French.”

On Tuesday, a stolen French fishing trawler entered Dover Harbour with 17 migrants on board. “When you have a trawler that size coming into Dover port without being stopped it’s a security lapse," says Roberts .

The Coastguard was alerted to the arrival of the seven migrants on a dinghy shortly before noon on Friday when a member of the public walking along Samphire Hoe pebble beach saw three lifejackets floating in the water.

Following initial fears that a helicopter and two rescue boats would need to be dispatched to rescue people from the water, officers discovered that all seven men had safely clambered ashore. Four were wet from the crossing and two were carrying large rucksacks.

Less than two hours after they arrived in the UK, the seven men are led into a Care and Custody immigration van and taken to Dover to be processed. They leave behind them a deflated dinghy, the fog-shrouded English Channel, and a path others will soon follow.