Using a small shovel, he digs up a dinghy buried in a sand dune on a beach not far from Boulogne-sur-Mer, assembles it and affixes a motor in record time. They have plan A, plan B and plan C, so there is always a way for them to get people across this sea. For as long as asylum seekers will pay them, there is too much money involved for them to give up.” The wind has dropped, the waves are flat and there are no French police in sight.
The conditions are perfect as the smuggler rushes everyone into the dinghy as it moves away from the shore. Amad is one of several asylum speakers who spoke to the Guardian this week from the area of northern France known as the Jungle. They were hoping to cross the Channel to the UK in the next few days.
Everyone wants to cross.” Some who have already been forcibly removed from the UK are hoping to return. They were sent to France under the “one in, one out” scheme, where one small-boat arrival is forcibly returned to France in exchange for another asylum seeker brought legally to the UK. Now, after moving approximately 1,500 people in both directions across the Channel, the scheme has been brought to an end.
Beset with problems, it could not be effectively scaled up, the British government concluded. NGOs working on the ground with asylum seekers in northern France were unsurprised by the outcome and say the end of “one in, one out” must prompt a wider discussion about how to deal with the crisis in the Channel. The UK government has shown little sign it is contemplating a radical shift in attitude.
A Home Office spokesperson pointed the Guardian to an announcement about a refugee resettlement scheme that is likely to assist only a few hundred refugees a year and is highly unlikely to stop people crossing the Channel in small boats. The spokesperson said: “Just last week, the home secretary announced the reopening of the UK resettlement scheme for new referrals, providing genuine refugees with a safe and legal route to the UK.” The agencies calling for a different approach hope at least to expand the parameters of the debate. According to workers in the Jungle, living conditions there are appalling.
Those at Utopia 56, which witnesses police interventions on French beaches where asylum seekers try to board dinghies, say that since the UK increased its funding to France earlier this year on a payment-by-results basis, police violence against migrants has increased significantly. Utopia 56 estimates a 40% increase in police violence from April to August 2026 compared with the same period the previous year. That coincided with an agreement for the UK to pay France £660m over three years to ramp up “stop the boats” initiatives.
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