Yet more migrants were brought to shore by UK Border Force this morning, after a reported “small boat incident” in the English Channel.
Sources suggest at least two more boats of migrants will arrive in the coming hours, with Government figures published yesterday showing an increase in the number of migrants-per-vessel.
Press Association snapped photos of migrants, primary adult men, arriving in Dover, though one migrant carried a small child wrapped in a blanket.
A Channel source predicts more crossings this morning, tapering off into the evening.
This week was expected to see very large numbers crossing, though it appears to have peaked on Monday with 661, followed by 345 on Wednesday.
In total, 1,425 have crossed into Britain since Monday, and will likely surpass 1,500 by close of play today – a number it would take three Bibby Stockholm barges’ to accommodate.
More than 18,000 people have crossed into Britain by small boats since the start of 2023.
This figure is slightly lower than this time 12 months ago, though that is largely being put down to worse weather in the first half of the year.
The bulk of crossings in 2022 didn’t happen until Q3 and Q4, meaning the Government is expecting a big increase over the coming months.
Mr Sunak is struggling to hit his promise to stop the boats, and to clear the ‘legacy backlog’ of asylum cases.
Official figures publishes yesterday showed a two decade-record in migrants coming to Britain, with asylum applications up 19 percent in a year.
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The Government granted asylum to 7 in 10 of its decisions, and while the legacy backlog of asylum cases did fall, it will take the Home Office to make three times as many decisions to reach Mr Sunak’s pledge to clear the backlog by the end of the year.
This morning it emerged the UK has started to fit bar-coded wristbands on migrants being held at processing facilities, as the Government grapples to keep tabs on those who have entered the country.
The tagging system has been put in place to allow authorities to monitor the number and whereabouts of migrants at the UK’s main processing sites at Marston and Western Jet Foil in Kent.
Yesterday’s figures also showed the state of crisis on the channel, with 52,530 ‘irregular migrants’ detected entering the UK – 85 percent of whom arrived via small boats.
This is a 17 percent increase on the year ending June 2022.
Adult men represent 87 percent of small boat arrivals in the year, and have represented 75 percent of total small boat arrivals since 2018.
Just 10 percent have been children in the first two quarters of 2023.
