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    "original_url": "https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/09\/24\/world\/europe\/france-britain-migrant-boats-police.html?emc=edit_nn_20260924&nl=the-morning&segment_id=226986",
    "parsed_content": "AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTSupported bySKIP ADVERTISEMENTInside France\u2019s Push to Stop Migrant Boats to BritainThousands of migrants cross the sea between France and England each year, though numbers have fallen amid increased policing.Listen \u00b7 10:11 min Share full articleMigrants walking toward the coast in northern France in August, hoping to cross to England on small boats.Credit...Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesBy S\u00e9gol\u00e8ne Le Stradic and Mark LandlerReporting from Dunkirk and Calais, in northern France, the correspondents followed migrants trying to reach the English Channel and interviewed officials and migration experts.Sept. 24, 2026, 12:01 a.m. ETSee more of our coverage in your search results.Encuentra m\u00e1s de nuestra cobertura en los resultados de b\u00fasqueda. Add The New York Times on GoogleAgrega The New York Times en Google On a warm, windless evening last month, some 40 African migrants gathered at a bus stop in Dunkirk, on the northern coast of France. Many carried plastic bags stuffed with life jackets. One couple with young children struggled to push a stroller, before leaving it at the side of the road.They had come from a rundown camp on the city\u2019s industrial outskirts and were making their way to one of Dunkirk\u2019s beaches, famous as the place where nearly a century earlier, an armada of small boats helped British troops escape the advancing Nazis.These migrants, too, were desperate to catch a small boat to cross the English Channel.But on this night, their journey stopped short of the water\u2019s edge. Near the shore, they were surrounded by the police after taking shelter in an agricultural greenhouse. They huddled in the darkness for hours, but were deterred by more officers on the beach and unable to reach the sea.This cat-and-mouse game, so routine that local residents scarcely notice it, is the latest front in a decades-long struggle between the French authorities and migrants. Since the 1990s, illegal crossings of the channel have become a chronic political challenge in Britain and a recurring source of tension between London and Paris.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTThere are signs that new cross-border policing efforts to curb this clandestine flow are working. The number of people arriving on small boats was down 43 percent through August of this year compared with the same period in 2025, to 16,500 from roughly 29,000, according to data recorded by the British government. Some of that, French officials said, is thanks to the heightened police presence on France\u2019s side, a deployment that is funded largely with British money.\u201cThe strengthening of Franco-British cooperation, relaunched on the fight against irregular immigration in the North, is bearing fruit,\u201d France\u2019s interior minister, Laurent Nu\u00f1ez, wrote on social media last month.ImageMigrants wading through the water to board an inflatable dinghy off the coast of northern France.Credit...Stephanie Lecocq\/ReutersAnd yet, the day after the migrants in Dunkirk were thwarted, nearly 500 others landed in England in small boats. Several who could not clamber onto the vessels had to be rescued. A day later, a man died during a failed crossing. And migration levels, though much lower than last year, are still far higher than before the pandemic.The numbers illustrate a complex truth. Increased law enforcement often reduces migration, but rarely ends it entirely. Other factors \u2014 such as the weather, hostility toward asylum seekers elsewhere in Europe and the pace of foreign conflicts \u2014 mean that pipelines like the channel cannot be blocked by border guards alone, according to immigration experts.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTAggressive policing also encourages human traffickers, who charge each migrant several thousand euros per crossing, to find new ways to evade the police. In France, it has prompted them to use different beaches and deploy \u201cwater taxis,\u201d which sail down the coast, picking up passengers who wade into the surf, where it is harder for the police to intercept them.Elsa Faucillon, a French lawmaker who compiled a critical report on the history of British-French initiatives to stop cross-channel migration, acknowledged the decline in numbers. But she argued that the increased French patrols made the crossings \u201cmore dangerous.\u201d\u201cPeople will try to go back \u2014 sometimes eight times, sometimes 10 times \u2014 and they will end up getting there,\u201d she said. \u201cOr they will end up dying.\u201d Mr. Nu\u00f1ez, the interior minister, said in Parliament this summer that said the police\u2019s priority was to \u201csave human lives\u201d by preventing people from entering the water.ImageWalls lining a railroad near Dunkirk to prevent migrants from accessing trains to Britain.Credit...Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesHafez Abdul knows the perils of repeat efforts. A 23-year-old from Eritrea, in eastern Africa, Mr. Abdul escaped death narrowly last month on his third attempted channel crossing, when an inflatable boat carrying him and more than 160 other migrants caught fire. It put a spotlight on the smugglers\u2019 growing use of so-called mega-boats, which carry many more passengers than the boats they previously used.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT\u201cIt was terrifying, and I swore it was the last time I tried to cross,\u201d Mr. Abdul said in an interview.Having fled Eritrea to avoid conscription, he said, Mr. Abdul crossed Sudan before flying to Russia and then voyaged across Belarus, Latvia and Belgium, ending up in France. He said he applied for asylum there, but his application was rejected. Under European Union law, Mr. Abdul should have stayed and applied for asylum in the country where he first entered the bloc, Latvia.Now, Mr. Abdul fears being deported back to Latvia \u2014 hence his desire to reach Britain, which is not part of the European Union.\u201cI want nothing but security, stability and protection,\u201d he said.Like many in his situation, Mr. Abdul was whiling away the afternoon at a shelter operated by a Catholic charity group, Secours Catholique, where he could charge his phone, get some food and kick a soccer ball with friends. Up to 800 people come in every day, most young men fleeing the Sudanese civil war, according to the center\u2019s manager, L\u00e9a Biteau.Many have stories similar to Mr. Abdul\u2019s. But a new profile has emerged in recent months, according to Ms. Biteau: people who were granted temporary asylum in Germany and started a new life there several years ago, but whose asylum was not renewed. Migrant children can be heard speaking German, even as their parents speak Arabic.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTFor Mr. Abdul and more than 2,000 others in dingy camps along the French coast, Britain has become a country of last resort. Some foreigners think it will be easier to stay on British soil because Britain left the European Union and cannot easily deport scores of migrants to E.U. countries.Still, as migration roils Britain\u2019s politics, the country has cracked down as well. The government has pledged nearly $900 million to subsidize patrols on French beaches until 2029. And it has cut grants of asylum, from a high of 76 percent of applicants in 2022 to just 42 percent last year.ImagePolice at a makeshift migrant camp in Dunkirk in May.Credit...Jean-Francois Badias\/Associated PressAmong those whose application was denied was Muhannad Ali, 42, a Libyan who said he left his country in 2023. Mr. Ali passed through Tunisia and flew to the Netherlands before reaching France. Then he headed to Britain, where, he said, he was disappointed by the lack of economic opportunity.Mr. Ali said he left voluntarily. But he would have been a candidate to be deported back to France through a \u201cone in, one out\u201d agreement between London and Paris. Under the deal, Britain is allowed to return a migrant who crossed the channel illegally in exchange for a migrant in France who has applied to enter legally.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTBritain\u2019s hope is that the arrangement will make migrants think twice about crossing covertly, which, in turn, might calm passions in the country, where media coverage of channel crossings reliably stirs voter anger.\u201cIf a significant share of those people were returned to France swiftly, theoretically, people would not get into a boat,\u201d said Mihnea Cuibus, a migration expert at the University of Oxford. \u201cIn practice, it\u2019s more difficult.\u201dConditions to apply from French soil are extremely restrictive. Applicants must have identification documents, which many have misplaced while journeying to Europe. They must carry cellphones and be ready to answer a call from officials at any time, over three months.ImageA warehouse used by groups helping migrants in Dunkirk.Credit...Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesBy September, more than 1,400 people had been returned to France under the policy \u2014 a fraction of the more than 41,000 people who reached Britain after crossing the channel last year. (Tens of thousands of other immigrants are deported annually to other countries.)AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTSuch numbers are a powerful weapon in the hands of British and French far-right leaders. Jordan Bardella, the president of the French far-right party, the National Rally, was a star attraction at a recent conference of Reform U.K. To cheers, Mr. Bardella vowed that if his party gained power, it would \u201censure that France is no longer the gateway for illegal migration into the United Kingdom.\u201dFrance, however, will have to overcome a resilient adversary: the smugglers. In addition to \u201cwater taxis,\u201d smugglers now use boats capable of carrying more passengers than before. The average number of people per boat is 65, up from 26 in 2021, according to the French maritime authorities.R\u00e9gis Holy, the head of the Calais branch of the Sauveteurs en Mer, a private rescue service, said his crew, which can rescue up to 80 people, recently monitored a boat carrying 230, the most that they had ever encountered.ImageR\u00e9gis Holy, left, the head of the Calais branch of the Sauveteurs en Mer, a private maritime rescue service.Credit...Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesDepartures used to be concentrated on beaches in Calais. Now they happen all along France\u2019s northwestern coast, and increasingly from Belgium.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT\u201cIf we really wanted to prevent migrants from crossing, we\u2019d have to station police every 100 meters along the coast,\u201d said Nicolas Laroye, a police union representative who spent more than a decade patrolling the border. That would require 15,000 officers, or about 10 percent of France\u2019s national police, he said, adding, \u201cThat\u2019s not possible.\u201dNor would it fix the underlying conundrum: France can prevent migrants from leaving, but it also does not want them to stay.Bushra Alzoubi contributed reporting.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT",
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