Two migrants die off Calais during Channel crossing

Two migrants died on Sunday, August 11, off the coast of Calais, bringing to nine the number of deaths during attempts to cross the Channel in one month. Fifty-three migrants were rescued but two others could not be resuscitated, one declared dead at the port of Calais (Pas-de-Calais), the other at the hospital in Boulogne-sur-Mer, adds the maritime prefecture (Prémar).

Sunday “early in the morning”a boat was reported “in difficulty with people in the water (…) off the coast of Calais »specified the prefecture of the Channel and the North Sea in a press release. Among the hundred migrants rescued between this intervention and another, all disembarked at the port of Calais, ” five [sont] in relative urgency »stressed Jacques Billant, the prefect of Pas-de-Calais, during a press briefing in Calais.

The Boulogne-sur-Mer prosecutor, Guirec Le Bras, announced the opening of an investigation “into the counts of aiding illegal immigrants in an organized gang aggravated by the circumstance of risk of death and disability, a crime, and of criminal association in an organized gang, endangering the lives of others, offenses”. No arrests had been made by mid-afternoon on Sunday.

Heavily loaded boats

In recent weeks, there has been a series of tragedies off the French coast, with seven deaths in attempted crossings in July, with Channel crossings on makeshift boats being particularly numerous in the summer. These deaths occur during attempts to reach England, which has been rocked in recent days by violence during anti-immigration and anti-Muslim demonstrations.

Between 12 and 19 July, six migrants died in three separate shipwrecks: four on 12 July, an Eritrean woman on 17 July, then a man on 19 July. On 28 July, Dina, a 21-year-old Bidoun woman – a stateless minority in Kuwait – was crushed to death in the dinghy that was to take her to England. Each time, the boats were very crowded. The number of people on board reached 86 on 19 July.

Over the whole of 2023, twelve migrants died trying to reach England by sea, according to the Prémar report. A human toll already largely exceeded in 2024, with twenty-five deaths since January, specified the prefect of Pas-de-Calais.

These crossings are often made “without life jackets”on board“Very poor quality boats because they are under-inflated and often without a floor (…)underpowered »he regretted. “This border kills in the greatest silence”reacted on X the association L'Auberge des migrants.

According to a count by Agence France-Presse based on figures from British authorities, as of August 8, 17,639 people had made the crossing since the beginning of the year on “small boats”the name given to these small boats, a figure almost equivalent to that recorded over the same period during the record year of 2022.

Fight against smugglers

France and the United Kingdom have been trying for years to stop these attempts to cross the Channel in inflatable boats. French President Emmanuel Macron and the new British Prime Minister Keir Starmer committed in mid-July to “strengthen their cooperation on irregular migration”on the sidelines of a summit with forty European leaders.

Barely having come to power in early July, Mr Starmer confirmed the abandonment of the controversial plan to deport migrants to Rwanda, launched in 2022 by the Conservatives then in power but never brought to fruition. Instead, he announced that he wanted to speed up the processing of asylum seekers' applications while toughening the fight against people smugglers. ” to strenghten “ the borders.

According to Jacques Billant, “since the beginning of 2024, more than 350 arrests have been made and more than fifteen smuggling networks have been dismantled”.

Keir Starmer has been grappling with violent far-right riots in recent days, which have rocked the UK for a week following the murder of three girls on 29 July, amid partly-debunked online rumours that the suspect in the attack was a Muslim asylum seeker. He is in fact a 17-year-old boy born in Cardiff whose parents, according to media reports, are from Rwanda.