French warship escorts migrant boat into UK waters

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A tiny inflatable dinghy packed with migrants was seen arriving in British waters today – as a legal cross-channel ferry waited in the background.

It came as a baby was seen among people being brought onto land by officials after journeying across the seas. 

French warships escorted the blow-up vessels here before dumping them on Border Force – despite authorities in France being paid £54million to stop illegal Channel crossings from their coast – as ‘stretched’ officials in Dover struggle to contain the spiralling fiasco. 

Ship-tracking website MarineTraffic appears to show a number of Border Force vessels approaching French waters so they can escort the small boats over to Dover Marina in Kent, where migrants including small children were seen disembarking as early as 9am today.

Tony Smith, former director-general of Border Force, said that France is ‘more than happy’ to pocket £54million to patrol its own coast but is unwilling to actually intercept illegal Channel crossings because its own public will not accept high levels of illegal migrants at home.

Pierre-Henri Dumont, the MP for Calais, confirmed that ships will not intercept the boats, but will instead let them sail into British territorial waters – because it is apparently no their job to prevent passage under maritime – and said they would only be approached if they asked for help. 

Hotels in Britain are being booked up to house illegal migrants, meaning that UK citizens looking to get married or take a holiday currently there could struggle to secure spaces. One bride and groom – Claire Chapman, 42, and Anthony Osborne, 41 – even found that their wedding reception in Kingston Lodge Hotel in south-west London was cancelled so the venue could put up migrants.

It is yet another blow to Home Secretary Priti Patel, whose ‘ridiculous’ multi-million-pound deal with France has sparked a Tory backlash. Furious MPs sitting on the Commons Home Affairs Committee yesterday told her to get tough with French authorities ‘fobbing her off with excuses’. 

Mr Smith told the Telegraph last night: ‘The French are more than happy to take money to invest in border security in their own territory but taking action in the actual Channel seems to be a step too far for them. Politically, stopping people in the Channel and returning them to France might be a hard issue for them to sell to the French public.’ 

The Calais MP: ‘If they are small boats trying to cross the sea and [migrants] are not asking for help, we are not supposed to intervene. It is not forbidden for people to be at sea. We have no legal basis to intervene when they are in French waters at sea.’  

Former minister Tim Loughton said the Government is being ‘fobbed off’ by the French authorities over the migrant crisis and said lawyers believe France could stop migrant boats on the water and take them back. 

He also told the Home Affairs Committee Border Force could return them to France if they gained permission and said this was because the migrants had broken the law by paying money to gangs to get to Britain as well as illegal entry.

Mr Loughton accused the Home Secretary of throwing ‘good money over bad’ and of allowing France to ‘make a mockery’ of international law, obliging them to intercept boats and return them to French territory if they have launched from France.

Speaking to MailOnline, Alp Mehmet, chairman of Migration Watch UK, said: ‘It really is absurd to pay the French to do something they should be doing, and ultimately to little effect. It is their responsibility to control their coastline. Their demand for payment to carry out their responsibilities is a disgrace. 

‘Perhaps we should insist on a contribution from them to run our Border Force. They are having a laugh.’  

It comes as MPs last night backed sweeping new laws which allow British authorities to prosecute thousands of asylum seekers who enter the UK illegally, with sentences of up to four years in jail.

The controversial Nationality and Borders Bill will introduce life sentences for people-smugglers, enable asylum seekers to be processed offshore and give the Border Force new powers to prevent Channel crossings. However, the measures will not take effect for months as the Bill is not expected to pass all its stages through Parliament until the end of the year. 

About 150 migrants from parts of Africa made the dangerous crossing from northern France to Dover yesterday, taking the total this year to around 8,500 – a new annual record which is set to get even higher as people-smugglers take advantage of flat seas and clear skies.  

As the migrant crisis in the Channel spirals out of control, it emerged:

• French authorities are refusing to turn back migrant boats on their way to Britain despite £54million payment;
• Hotels are being booked up to house illegal migrants, meaning that British citizens looking to get married or take a holiday currently there could struggle to secure spaces;
• More than 60 per cent of migrants from France have landed in the UK via Belgium, Ms Patel said; 
• Home Secretary told MPs that France was ‘doing its bit’ to intercept illegal crossings from its coastline;
• Calais MP told the BBC that £54million deal was pointless because migrants will hide from authorities;  
• Former Immigration Chief in Calais said the military should be brought in to manage the crisis;  
• Downing Street attacked the ‘dangerous and unnecessary’ surge in migrants crossing the Channel; 
• Home Office blamed rise in Channel crossings on ‘surge in illegal migration across Europe’.

People-smugglers made use of the continuing good weather today, with 35 migrants arriving on two Border Force boats before 10am. The two vessels, a high speed RHIB as well as the cutter Hunter were seen pulling into Dover Marina at around 9.30am. 

A child too young to walk was carried along the walkway to the harbour by his father. Three small children followed, each holding the hand of a Border Force official.

A woman wearing a headscarf, beige parka and blue jeans, possibly their mother, followed closely behind. She was carrying a red rucksack, which she put down briefly to undo her life jacket outside of the registration area on the harbour side.

The remaining migrants appeared to be mainly men of Middle Eastern origin. Most were wearing hoodies, jackets and jeans or jogging bottoms. They were escorted off the boat to the docks by immigration enforcement officers. 

Around 10 large inflatable dinghies with outboard motors used by migrants have been lined up alongside the pontoon. It is thought the glut of dinghies brought into the marina over the last few days has caused the route to be blocked to Border Force vessels trying to access the dockside. 

Four men who appeared to be North African were brought in to harbour on a small Border Force rhib. One had wrapped a blanket around himself after making the treacherous journey across one of the busiest shipping routes in the world.

Two Border Force officers entered Dover Marina on jet skis at 12.20pm with no rhibs in tow. Border Force cutter Speedwell was docked in the harbour, as was the RNLI’s Daniel L Gibson lifeboat. 

Border Force vessel Neptune has been patrolling the Romney Marsh area of coast, potentially in an attempt to prevent migrants from reaching shore without interception. Border Force cutters Valiant and Hunter ventured as far out to sea as around 10 miles – with the latter appearing to come close to a French Navy ship according to marine traffic monitoring tools.

Hurricane brought in a further 45 migrants shortly before 1pm.Many of them carried their possessions in clear plastic bags as they were escorted up the gangway for processing by Immigration Enforcement.

A mother held the hand of her young child followed by a man carrying a baby wrapped in a light blue blanket. He handed the sleeping infant to a Border Force officer wearing a white boiler suit before disembarking with his partner.

Another man was seen being wrapped in a similar blanket by an officer despite the searing heat in Dover. He was kept on the boat until the other migrants had got off.

But one male migrant was kept on the vessel for about 20 minutes more. It is not known why but crews were seen erecting a small green tent in the hull and flanked him with yellow bags as he walked up the gangway.

A small black RHIB could be seen floating in the water attached with a rope to a part of Hurricane which had a fluorescent yellow sign which read ‘rescue zone’. This was fished up to deck once all the migrants wearing orange life jackets had disembarked.

Immigration union officials have warned that Border Force staff at Dover Marina are stretched to their limit. Lucy Moreton of the Immigration Services Union told MailOnline: ‘Staff are routinely working 16 or 17-hour shifts. We were given assurance from the Home Office that this would cease but it has crept back up in the last few days. 

‘The facilities at Tughaven were designed to only be open for part of each day, but it has now been occupied 24 hours a day. This places pressure on things like cleaning schedules with cleaners not being able to access the site because migrants are still present.

‘Things like the cleaning and emptying schedule for the portaloos used by both migrants and staff was not set up to cope with the scale. Obviously things are not helped with the heat in recent days. There is no shade. 

‘The facilities are large exhibition style tents with rubber matting floors. These heat up significantly. The large fans which we would have used to provide some air circulation cannot be used at the moment because of the risk of transmission of Covid.’ 

Last night, the Nationality and Borders Bill won a 101 majority in the Commons, passing by 366 to 265 votes. Ms Patel, hailing the passing of the Bill at its second reading, said the public ‘have simply had enough of illegal migration’. 

However, Labour MPs voted against the bill, with Shadow Home Office Minister Bambos Charalambous saying it was ‘riddled with holes, fatally flawed and will not work. It won’t work because a glaring omission is the lack of bilateral agreements with France and other countries.’

 Conservative MPs including Damian Collins, Tory MP for Folkestone and Hythe, welcomed the measures, saying migrant arrivals in small boats had ‘become a fact of life’ for people on England’s southeast coast. 

Separate laws to curb judicial review powers will ban appeals if immigration and asylum claims have been rejected twice, reduce delays in the High Court, save money and meet the Government’s manifesto commitment ‘to ensure the courts are not open to abuse’. 

The planned legislation will remove the right of immigration and asylum claimants to apply for judicial review of upper tribunal cases. Labour described the Bill as ‘unhinged’ and attacked ministers for trying to put themselves ‘above the law’. 

The Home Secretary is under mounting domestic pressure to solve the crisis. Tory MP Mr Loughton said: ‘Yesterday we had a French military naval vessel escorting one of the boats into British territorial waters, and then tried to hand over the occupants to a boat full of journalists.’ 

He added: ‘This is ridiculous and it makes a mockery of it, so just giving the French more money to carry on doing what they’re doing badly is not going to solve the problem.’ 

Director General of Border Force Paul Lincoln told the committee the number of French interceptions of small boats crossing the Channel had trebled in a year from more than 2,100 at the end of June last year to more than 6,000 for the same period this year.

Ms Patel said: ‘I have absolutely discussed directly with my French counterpart.’

She added: ‘We have absolutely been looking at what we can do at sea in terms of maritime tactics all within the legal framework, absolutely within the legal framework, of saving lives at sea and international maritime law, and the French are aware of that as well.

‘They absolutely know what their responsibilities are.’

Meanwhile it emerged France will stump up just two officers per mile per day – 200 over 85 miles – to stop boats leaving the shore. Critics claimed this was akin to about one policeman per mile between Boulogne and Dieppe because otherwise they would be working 24-hour shifts.

Elsewhere Ms Priti Patel was blasted for allowing hotels to be used to house migrants. Whole venues are being booked up for them in a blow to Britons looking to marry or go on a staycation. 

A record-breaking number of people have crossed the Channel already this year, with at least 8,452 people having made the trip, passing the total for all of 2020.

The fallout comes after the Government announced it will send France a further £54.2million to help stem the flow of migrants crossing the Channel in small boats.

The Home Office said the money would be spent on doubling the numbers of police patrolling France’s northern beaches, improving intelligence sharing and on new technology to target people smugglers. 

Mr Loughton pointed out last year the Government sent France 31.4million euro (£27.1million) to tackle the issue. He said: ‘Since that time, you now have a record number of boats which have come across the channel, and the number of interceptions by the French has actually fallen.’

Referring to the new £54million sum, he asked: ‘Isn’t that throwing good money after bad?’

Ms Patel replied: ‘This is an evolving situation, the numbers of migrants attempting these crossings from France has increased considerably.’

She added: ‘Our counterparts in France, our operational partners as well as our operational partners in the UK which involves our intelligence partners, have seen complete change in modus operandi in terms of the crossings.’

Mr Patel said instead of the majority of migrants coming from Calais, there was now a ‘widespread dispersal’ of launches along the entire French coastline. 

To tackle this the French have deployed 200 officers to march along an 85-mile stretch of coast between Boulogne and Dieppe. If they worked 24 hours a day, this works out at two policemen per mile – but critics say realistically it is only one.

Ms Patel was also slammed after it emerged whole hotels are being booked up to house migrants. It means those looking to get married or take a holiday there could struggle to guarantee spaces.

The Home Office is tempting hoteliers with large wads of cash for rooms for months, according to the Sun. A source told the newspaper: ‘You have to remember the industry has been devastated by Covid. There have been no paying guests for months.

‘For a lot of hotels, it’s a chance to make guaranteed money for weeks, if not months. You have to be brave not to take up that offer.’

At least five children including a crying toddler were among migrants brought ashore in Dover by Border Force yesterday. Arrivals revealed they paid £3,000 for places on dinghies as cynical people-smuggling gangs take advantage of flat seas and clear skies.

Nearly 8,500 have made the crossing so far this year, according to official figures – compared to the record number of 8,410 in the whole of 2020. 

It comes as retired immigration official Kevin Saunders told GB News that the military should be called in because Border Force is just ‘operating a collection service from the Channel’.  

He said: ‘We’ve got to do something. I think probably we’ve now reached the point where we need to bring the military in to help us. All really Border Force are doing is operating a collection service from the Channel. We need to stop these people. 

‘We need the military to actually come and take over and help us to do this.’ 

Yesterday the MP for Calais rubbished Ms Patel’s latest £54million payment to France as pointless because migrants will ‘just find somewhere else to cross’. 

His remarks were echoed by Mr Smith, who said there is a ‘game of cat-and-mouse’ between French authorities and people-smugglers along the French coast. 

There will also be an increased use of aerial surveillance, including drones, and the two countries agreed to draw up a long-term plan for a ‘smart border’ using technology to identify where crossings are being attempted. But the deal failed to impress critics, who accuse the French authorities of not doing enough to stop small boats leaving their territorial waters. 

It follows claims that a French warship on Monday escorted a group of 13 migrants in a dangerously-overcrowded boat into British waters before dumping them with a baffled Good Morning Britain news crew reporting live from the Channel. 

Mr Dumont told the BBC: ‘The fact is, having more money, having more police, having more controls will not prevent more crossing attempts. We have too many kilometers of shore to monitor. They can hide in a lot of places, there are a lot of roads, woods and trees.

‘So even if you are monitoring 100 per cent of a small or large part of the French coast the smugglers will find somewhere to cross somewhere else. If it’s not Calais they will go to Normandy, if not Normandy then Belgium or the Netherlands.’  

Responding to Mr Dumont’s comments, Home Office Minister Victoria Atkins told the BBC that she believes Ms Patel’s ‘very significant agreement’ with the French is likely to curb the number of migrants crossing the Channel from northern France. 

She also told Radio 4’s Today programme that ‘developed economies around the world are facing issues with population movement’ but said that Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union had ‘enabled us to take steps’ to ‘really crack-down’ on people-smugglers. 

The £130m migrant misery trade: SUE REID exposes the secret boat warehouses, the military planning, as well as the fortunes paid – and made. And the French cafe that’s an unlikely international hub…

Special Investigation by SUE REID FOR THE DAILY MAIL

An easy stroll from the busy train station in Dunkirk is a tiny cafe with wooden stools and a smart blue front door.

The cafe is popular with migrants at the north French port who sip tea or Arabic-style coffee as they wait for a place on a traffickers’ boat to Britain.

But the unassuming place is also where trafficking gangs with links to Iran, Iraq and Turkey busily drum up trade for cross-Channel journeys.

Not far from here are wide beaches from which thousands of men, women and children have sailed in inflatable dinghies to England this year.

Crucially, the café is a 20-minute bus journey from a Dunkirk suburb, Grande-Synthe, where 400 migrants at any one time live in bell tents round a public lake with one thing on their minds: a new life in Britain.

From this part of northern France, the Mail has tracked in forensic detail the traffickers’ extraordinary operation which brings migrant boats across the Channel.

We have exposed the ruthlessly efficient international criminal network, thanks in part to help from British, French and German anti-trafficking units, workers from refugee charities and immigration authorities in EU countries as well as Turkey, Iraq and Iran.

As we probed the massive operation, the Dunkirk cafe came up again and again. We have proved it is a hub with links to criminals who each night, with military precision, orchestrate the migrant sailings to Dover and along our south coast.

After a month-long investigation, we can expose how the gangs guide migrants by GPS signals on mobile phones to precise beach locations where boats — secretly transported by coach and car from Europe’s fringes — are already hidden in sand dunes for their journey.

As a Kurdish-Dutch official working for the European intelligence services told us: ‘The British public think the migrants are buying the odd boat from a French coast hyper-market and launching it by themselves from the beaches.

‘The reality is different. We are fighting international organised crime on a huge scale. The bosses at the top are multilingual, highly intelligent, sophisticated men. They don’t care a jot for the migrants — they only want money.

‘We desperately want to disrupt the business model of the traffickers. But it is slickly run through mobile phones and the internet with the super-efficiency of a winning army.’

One of his colleagues added: ‘The migrants heading for the UK through Europe are limitless. Many genuinely want a better life. Others are strangers who hide their true identities and may be a danger to Britain’s security.’

The number of migrants arriving by boat into the UK in 2021 hit nearly 8,500 this week — more than the entire tally last year.

On Monday, a record daily total of 430 landed from France, while 287 arrived on Tuesday, and many more came ashore yesterday. Border Force and RNLI boats ferried them into Dover in a regular procession.

There are now so many migrants arriving that each one is given a green wristband with a number — rather than using their name — when they go through initial vetting where they are checked for weapons or knives on the beaches or at Dover port.

A knife was found left in one boat this week and an Iraqi Kurd arrival had an ominous tattoo on his hand of a gun.

In Dungeness, Kent — home of one of Britain’s nuclear power stations — police officers armed with semi-automatic rifles were sent from the plant to guard the facility as migrants arrived on Tuesday.

Despite the fact that Home Secretary Priti Patel agreed this week to give France another £54 million to stop the crossings, on five occasions monitored by the Mail between dawn and midday yesterday, French navy ships escorted migrants illegally into English waters for a ‘handover’ to British Border Force vessels.

Many of the boats arriving this week are mega-inflatables with big outboards, the new hallmark of the traffickers. They cost thousands of pounds, can carry up to 90 migrants and make longer journeys from far-flung places along the French coast to the UK.

So how did this small stretch of water across the English Channel emerge as a traffickers’ paradise? Twenty years ago, migrants reaching Europe were drawn to Calais by a Red Cross centre on a hill above the port.

It gave 2,000 people shelter, food, and clothing as they tried to reach Britain by lorry on ferries. It was shut by the French at the request of Britain in 2002.

Yet the migrants from Africa, South Asia, the Middle East and the Balkans didn’t leave northern France — and more were soon to join them.

They re-grouped in a Calais shanty camp which the migrants themselves nicknamed ‘the Jungle’. It had roads, shops, a mosque and tea houses.

When this illegally built camp was torn down by bulldozers in 2017 by the French Government it housed more than 6,000 people.

The residents were dispersed throughout France, but soon returned to Calais. The same year, the traffickers devised a new route — by small boat instead of lorries on ferries — to dispatch migrants to Britain. And the number arriving on our beaches has soared ever since.

‘For the traffickers, the boats are a brilliant financial success story,’ an aid worker based in Dunkirk told us this week. ‘We think the numbers getting to the UK will reach 20,000 this year from the talk in the camps. It could be higher as plenty wait to go.

The British are desperately trying to disrupt the gangs organising the boat crossings. They need the help of the French and Germans. After Brexit, relationships between the UK and EU are strained and this is not helping co-operation.’

But political troubles aside, how do the criminals so efficiently send migrants by sea to our shores? The multi-million-pound operation starts thousands of miles away in dusty, lawless places which are a 24-hour drive from Turkey’s Istanbul, the gateway to Europe.

Here, hidden away in cities such as Erbil, capital of the Kurdistan region of Iraq, and Sardasht, a majority Kurdish-speaking city in Iran, the trafficking bosses orchestrate every detail of the Channel journeys.

‘Their network’s tentacles stretch from Iran and Iraq into Turkey to Europe and the UK,’ explained a female official working in north-west Germany to stifle trafficking routes.

‘The gangs running the Channel boat operation are mainly Iraqi and Iranian Kurds. Some have dual nationalities and flit regularly from Erbil and Sardasht to their fine houses in Holland, France, Germany and Britain.

‘Others lower in their network are Kurdish who have settled in Europe or been drawn into gangs as cash-paid ‘runners’ or ‘facilitators’ as they wait in France, often penniless, hoping to cross the Channel.’

The Mail has been told the key to the success of the trafficking operation is secrecy. The names of the masterminds are unknown to those in the network who work even in the layer below them.

And so that confidentiality goes on, layer by layer, down to the junior ‘runners’ on the ground in Dunkirk. Nicknames and pseudonyms are de rigueur.

The traffickers use cheap ‘burner’ phones with numbers that are changed daily, sometimes hourly, and thrown away after use.

‘It is brilliant to behold,’ says a German immigration officer. ‘The secrecy is enforced ruthlessly. Those in the network who speak out fear a gun to their head, whether it is in a Dunkirk cafe or a cash-only London barber’s shop which later launders the money.’

As the Mail dug into the trafficking operation, we found that the legions of rubber inflatable boats crossing the Channel are bought in bulk and collected from Turkey.

The Japan-made outboard engines often powering them towards England are sourced by traffickers from inside Europe. They also appear to be bought in job lots before being collected together for transit to France.

We were told this week that they are purchased new from wholesalers or second-hand from boatyards in Denmark, Austria, the Netherlands or areas of Germany near the French border.

A UK harbour official on the south coast who spoke to us on condition of anonymity explained: ‘You suddenly see boats arriving in Dover, day after day, which all have the same brand name on their outboards.

‘Recently — and even last week — there has been a spate of Japanese-made Tohatsu engines. It means that these outboards have been purchased in their scores — and probably from the same place — by the traffickers.’ The operation ticks with clockwork precision.

We have tracked the route of the migrants’ dinghies from Turkey to Germany to the French beaches. After a journey taking only a few days, they are then hidden in sand dunes exactly three hours before the migrants are sent to the same spot by trafficking gangs to climb in them.

‘The boats’ journey often starts in Istanbul,’ explains a logistics expert at an EU anti-trafficking unit. ‘The traffickers use the holds of long-distance inter-city buses to bring them from Turkey [where borders are notoriously porous] to secret holding areas in Germany before they are taken on to France.’

And this is how it works: the passengers — mainly migrants heading for Europe — get on the cheap-ticket public buses driven by a tame person in the pay of the gangs. The passengers put their luggage in one of the three holds at the base of the vehicle. The other two holds are already shuttered tight.

Said the logistics expert: ‘The closed luggage holds are filled with uninflated boats still in cardboard boxes put there with the driver’s knowledge by the traffickers. A bus can carry 40 boats at a time.

‘When the buses reach their destination, often Munich and other cities in southern Germany, the passengers are dropped off and often claim asylum.

‘The rogue driver then continues his journey empty of passengers. He takes the boats to one of a number of isolated warehouses in north-west Germany where the traffickers unload them.

The Mail has seen an undercover photograph taken inside a warehouse at a German city — which we have chosen not to name — where the boats are temporarily stored. The picture shows unwrapped cartons of Japanese outboard engines made by Tohatsu with its distinctive logo beside boxes of boats.

In one clip, a black and green rubber boat — of the type seen in Dover this spring and summer — lies uninflated and flat on the floor as it is inspected by traffickers before it is sent on its next leg of the journey to France.

But what of the migrants on the French coast 300 miles away? As the boats leave the German warehouse, these hopefuls are simultaneously being marshalled for a sea journey aboard them that night to the UK.

Around midday, those at the Grande-Synthe shanty camp go to a charity-run food queue. And it is there that the traffickers — including the junior runners and facilitators who drink tea in the Dunkirk cafe — walk up and down the waiting lines.

They know from their burner phones who in the line has paid for that night’s ticket and if the fare has been sent by internet transfer from the migrants’ relatives in the UK or in their home countries.

The runners ask individual migrants who have paid for a boat to step to one side into the shelter of the bushes. There they snap a photograph of their face.

It is an important moment for the migrant, for that portrait will later allow him or her to get on a boat. Once the photograph is taken, the runner sends the migrant a map of the French beaches with a GPS mapping reference point on it.

It tells them exactly what spot, on what beach, to go that night. The migrants about to travel are told to wear only black trainers because white or paler colours will reflect in the torches and spotlights of French police who search the shores into the small hours for what they call ‘le clandestine’ travellers.

The operation is methodical and efficient.

It is now early in the evening. The migrants are ready to find their beach spot. The boating equipment is about to leave a warehouse in Germany.

An anti-trafficking official based in north France explains: ‘The boating stuff is loaded into fleets of cars. The drivers are Iraqi Kurds from Germany, Holland or France. They are sometimes of Turkish-French heritage with Kurdish links.

‘These drivers will be put on standby in north-west Germany at six at night. Their job is to each collect one or two boats or outboards from the warehouse and carry them to the French coast near Dunkirk or Calais. They ask no questions, nor would they dare to.’

The drivers have a six-hour journey ahead and reach north France at one in the morning where they park up near Dunkirk or Calais and await instructions via their mobiles from the traffickers about which beach to take the cargo. 

The Mail has been told that fleets of cars carrying the boats have been spotted at night by French police at pay booths on the toll road leading to the beaches.

Another logistics expert in northern France said: ‘Ninety-five per cent pass through the toll booths which allows us to monitor their journeys which are organised with precision.

‘They travel through the toll booths in designated time slots given to them on mobile phones by the gangs. Only a few go through the paid tolls every so often, so the numbers don’t attract attention of the authorities.

‘They normally drop off the boating equipment on a beach by two in the morning.’

The beach sites all have GPS ‘pins’ that are given to the migrants, who will arrive there close to dawn.

Up to now, of course, the migrant traveller has only seen the face of the traffickers’ junior runners. They may have chatted to them in the Dunkirk cafe or when being photographed near the food queue line.

They have no idea of the identity of the more powerful leaders of the gangs back in Iraq, Iran or Turkey. And they never will.

The migrants obey their GPS instructions. They begin to make the journey to the beaches in the late evening by bus, tram or train. They walk doggedly for miles during the night following the GPS signal to get to where their allocated boat is hidden.

On arrival, they see the figure of a senior trafficker for the first time. His face is hidden by a mask, scarf or motorbike helmet.

He holds a bundle of photographs taken by the junior runner at lunch time in the food queue. Each migrant is asked to show his or her face. The trafficker checks the photographs against this to make sure each is a paid-up passenger.

Then the migrant is finally let through to the beach and the boat which will carry him to what he calls the ‘promised land’.

Incredibly, we have found that the traffickers train a few of the migrants sent to each vessel in basic boat assembly on the afternoon before they start out for the beaches.

This often takes place in disused buildings near the Dunkirk suburb’s Grand-Synthe camp, including a partly burned-down and decrepit farmhouse.

A French police officer who oversees the evening beach searches to stop migrants setting off on dangerous journeys, told us: ‘It is the migrants who have to inflate the boats, attach the outboards, make them shipshape. They are so desperate to reach Britain that they agree. But it is a very dangerous for them as not many are seamen.’

The boat is then launched by the migrants, often hideously overloaded. The passengers are allowed one mobile, a burner cleansed of traffickers’ contacts.

It will be used to send an SOS to the British or French sea rescue services if they begin to sink on the terrifying journey.

The police officer added: ‘The gangs often order them to destroy their own phones before they leave and this is a condition of travel.’

The inflatable boat carrying desperate migrants is soon heading across the seas to Britain.

It has been in Europe for just a few days.

Meanwhile, the boat-delivery cars from Germany have turned for home. The gangs’ runners and facilitators in Dunkirk will soon be asleep in rental houses and small hostels from where they operate with impunity.

In Iraq and Iran, the gang leaders are immensely richer.

Their journeys have reaped millions out of migrants’ pockets in the last few weeks alone.

One long inflatable boat with the distinctive Japanese Tohatsu outboard which brought 55 people across the Channel last month made the traffickers a third of a million pounds in fares.

The going rate for a channel crossing is today £6,000 per person, we were told by undercover police from the UK and across Europe.

It has been higher — £7,000 earlier this year when more migrants were massing on the north coast of France in bad weather and desperate to leave but the boats were not setting off.

It is a matter of demand and supply like any business.

You only have to multiply 8,500 successful ticket holders by the traffickers’ fee to know this is a lucrative organised crime. Close to £55 million may have been paid to the traffickers so far this year — and if, say, 20,000 migrants enter Britain illegally by traffickers’ boats this year, it means their paymasters could reap some £130 million from the trade.

A British law enforcement contact told me: ‘Cocaine, illegal arms, all destined for our cities’ streets, are financial child’s play against the trafficking of migrants to this country.’

Priti Patel promised this month that Britain is fighting back against the traffickers. It will be a tough battle against a hugely efficient operation built on greed and extraordinary efficiency.

But those who have helped us piece together this story say criminals amassing fortunes from human desperation — whether in Kurdish cities of Iraq and Iran, the cities of Europe, or a Dunkirk cafe — must never be allowed to win.