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UK police said they arrested six protesters after an anti-immigration demonstration in southern England “became hostile towards officers” as a boat carrying migrants spent 36 hours crossing the Channel from France.
Facing a crackdown from French and British authorities, migrants desperate to cross to the UK have been adopting new strategies in recent months, including relying on larger dinghies and utilising new routes.
That has sparked renewed anger in England, with anti-immigrant protesters gathering in southern coastal towns with plans to foil the arrival of asylum seekers.
Around 200 protesters, some in black clothing and wearing face coverings, gathered in Gosport in the south to protest the anticipated arrival of a migrant boat, UK media reported.
The flimsy vessel had spent 36 hours at sea according to the UK’s volunteer coastguard. The dinghy carrying 51 migrants landed in Dover in the southeast instead.
French authorities said migrants on board the “ill-suited” boat had refused assistance because they were “determined to take all risks to reach the United Kingdom.”
The occupants had spent “more than 33 hours at sea in precarious conditions,” said a statement issued by the French government’s Maritime Prefecture of the Channel and the North Sea.
Earlier this month, hundreds of demonstrators gathered in an attempt to block asylum seekers who had arrived by small boat in Portsmouth, in the southern county of Hampshire.
Authorities fear Hampshire, where the arrival of small boats has been rare, is becoming a new destination for crossings.
The vessels usually arrive further east in Kent, where the distance across the Channel between the French and British coasts is shorter.
French officials also say they are facing “increased” pressure as migrants attempt to depart from further west, where the border patrol is more sparse.
Britain has been grappling with how to curb the perilous journeys, which have spurred support for the hard-right Reform UK party.
The Home Office said in early September that the number of crossings in August had fallen to their lowest level since records began in 2018, with migrant arrivals also at their lowest number since 2020.
But in recent months authorities have reported an increase in the number of passengers travelling per boat.
According to Home Office data as of Sunday, 17,480 migrants have crossed the Channel in small boats since the beginning of the year.
This is a tiny fraction of the overall number of people seeking to move to Britain every year. The vast majority arrive via legal routes, government data shows.
Additional sources • AFP