People smugglers are earning around £300,000 a boat for Channel crossings

People smugglers are earning around £300,000 a boat for Channel crossings. The number of migrants crossing the channel has increased dramatically since last year.

Channel crossings are on the rise and people smugglers are said to be earning hundreds of thousands of pounds per boat. Thousands of people have made the journey to the UK this year already, but only five migrants have been sent back. The figures on the number of people sent back emerged today, November 17.

Labour’s Yyvette Cooper quizzed Home Office minister Tom Pursglove on the number of people that have been sent back after having arrived illegally in the UK. Pursglove initially only gave overall figures. He went on to reveal the number of people sent back in 2021 when pushed. He said: “The answer in this year is five.”

Speaking to the Home Affairs Select Committee, Pursglove commented: “Small boat arrivals are becoming the route of choice, facilitated by evil criminal gangs who are becoming more audacious and using larger boats.

“Before we saw boats coming from a 50km stretch of coastline, now it’s more like 200km.”

According to the Clandestine Channel Threat Commander Dan O’Mahoney, trafficking people across the Channel is increasingly profitable for gangs. He commented: “Two weeks ago we had a single boat with 88 migrants on, each one of them could be paying €4,000, meaning the smugglers could have earned €350,000 a boat.”

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