The lights on the opposite side of the English Channel were visible on Thursday (25), and this encouraged migrant Emanuel Malbah, who spent the last week in a makeshift camp on the north coast of France, dreaming of making the crossing. “I don’t think I’m going to die,” he said. “I think I’ll make it to England.”
After leaving their home countries in the Middle East and Africa and following long journeys across Europe, nothing but a narrow stream separates Malbah, 16, and other migrants from their goal. But the narrowness of the English Channel is misleading, as was made clear on Wednesday (24), when at least 27 people died in a failed attempt to cross the channel in a precarious inflatable dinghy.
Despite the deaths – and the disaster on Wednesday was one of the deadliest in recent years involving migrants in Europe – on Thursday Malbah and others were still waiting for the best moment to run out of the bush in their own boats and try to reach the beach.
The number of migrants venturing into the English Channel has risen sharply in recent months as authorities have made other routes to England difficult, especially by truck passing through the tunnel under the channel.
“This is the new Mediterranean,” said Malbah, who arrived in Calais a week ago. He alluded to the scenario of the 2015 migrant crisis that shook Europe.
He himself left Liberia, West Africa, more than a year ago and made the treacherous Mediterranean crossing, arriving in Italy. On Thursday, he was speaking in a wooded area near the beach where dozens of other migrants sought shelter from the rain under blue tarpaulins and tried to warm themselves around a fire.
Instigated by the tragedy at sea the day before, French and British leaders pledged to fight migrants crossing the canal that separates their two countries. They attributed what happened to organized gangs of human traffickers, and they also held each other accountable.
The deaths reminded everyone that little has changed in the five years since French authorities dismantled a large migrant camp in Calais. The two countries are still struggling to control migrants in the area, following a policy that, for immigration experts and migrant rights organizations, places asylum seekers in unnecessary danger.
French authorities confirmed on Thursday that children and a pregnant woman were among the drowned migrants. Rescue teams worked in the cold and biting wind to retrieve bodies and try to identify the dead. Two survivors, one from Iraq and the other from Somalia, were taken to a French hospital with severe hypothermia.
French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said authorities believed 30 people were crammed into a vessel he compared to “an inflatable garden pool”.
French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson spoke on the phone Wednesday and said they had agreed to step up efforts to prevent migrants from crossing one of the world’s busiest shipping routes. The UK is currently giving France money to help cover the cost of barring crossings through surveillance and patrols.
The two countries have long exchanged accusations of doing too little to curb the crossings, but many immigration experts and migrant rights groups say the two sides share the responsibility: their approach is to make the situation for migrants as difficult as possible, to discourage them from leaving for Europe.
“France fulfills roles for the UK as a third-party agent, just as Turkey does for Europe,” said migration expert François Héran of the Collège de France in Paris. “Why does France allow British police officers to operate on French soil to help stop immigration? It’s because we share the same ideology that these asylum seekers are undesirable.”
At the start of the migration crisis in Europe in 2015, the English Channel was seen as an insurmountable barrier. Its shifting sea currents and volatile weather conditions made any attempt at crossing too risky.
Instead, many migrants tried to board trucks entering the tunnel under the canal. Today, however, police regularly patrol the roads leading to the canal, and four-meter-high barbed wire barriers extend for miles along several access routes to Calais. All of this has sharply reduced the number of migrants hitchhiking in trucks.
Pierre Roques, coordinator of the NGO Auberge des Migrants, in Calais, said that the northern coast of France “has been militarized” in recent years. For him, “the more security is present, the more human trafficking networks grow, because migrants are no longer able to cross on their own.”
Several Sudanese migrants queuing at a food distribution center on the outskirts of Calais said that police often run through their makeshift camps, sometimes beating them with electric rods. A Human Rights Watch report released in October described as “forced suffering” the tactic of harassing migrants to induce them to leave.
Migrants play a game of cat and mouse with the authorities. Malbah, the teenager from Liberia, described an attempted crossing on Tuesday (23) that had to be aborted because the inflatable boat’s engine failed to start. The French police appeared soon after and cut up the boat.
Didier Leschi, director of the French Office of Immigration and Integration, attributed the large increase in the number of crossings on the canal – he said they sometimes take up to 50 a night – to “a kind of mafia professionalism” by the traffickers, who encourage migrants to settle down. overboard, charging prices ranging from $1,100 to $2,800.
Leschi said France would need tens of thousands of police to monitor the kilometer-long coastline from which migrants depart. Migrant rights groups said that, aside from the crackdown, authorities had done little to address the increase in boat crossings.
Alain Ledaguenel, president of a private organization that conducts sea rescues from Dunkirk, the likely starting point for migrants who died Wednesday, said in recent months his team has participated in three times as many rescues at sea. “We’ve been sounding the alarm for two years. It hasn’t stopped since September.”
In a critically speaking report released last month, the National Assembly said the French government’s policy towards migrants had been a failure and led to a violation of their rights. According to the text, 85% of the money spent by the French and British in 2020 to deal with the migrant population on the French coast was used for security and only 15% was directed towards health and other types of assistance.
In Calais, migrants wanting to reach the UK are increasingly desperate. Sassd Amian, 25, of South Sudan, said he had pinned his hopes on trucks heading for the tunnel under the English Channel.
A graduate in architecture, Amian said his dream is to arrive in England, which he described as “a strong country, with quality education and where the English language is spoken”. He said he fled the war in South Sudan four years ago and that, after stops in Egypt and Libya, he faced crossing the Mediterranean to Italy and lack of food and water.
When trucks pass a roundabout on their way to the canal tunnel, there is a moment — just seconds — when a person can try to slip between the axles and find a place to hide, Amian said. Migrants comment that several people have already lost their legs in this attempt and some have died.
But having come this far, Amian says he’s not afraid: “Death is nothing new in this life.”
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