France has been forced to ban the sale of inflatable dinghies from Channel towns in a bid to try to end a surge in migrant crossings.
Sports shops dotted around the French coast near the Channel have been told to stop selling the boats and kayaks amid a steady flow of migrants sailing across the waters to the UK.
But despite the ban, people smugglers are able to get around the restrictions by ordering the inflatable vessels online and getting them delivered to their safe houses, reports The Sun.
The boats and kayaks are then transported by the traffickers to points along the coast where migrants hoping to cross the Channel can pick them up.
A group of people thought to be migrants are brought ashore from the local lifeboat at Dungeness in Kent this afternoon
Sports retailer Decathlon's store in Calais showed on their website that boats were not for sale - but the newspaper was able to order a vessel online for £600 and get it home delivered to an address in the coastal city.
Meanwhile, it is also possible to order an inflatable boat on Amazon to be delivered to addresses in Calais.
It comes as the flow of migrants to Britain across the Channel slowed markedly on Tuesday after Priti Patel threatened to cancel the £54million promised to France to help their authorities tackle the crisis.
On Monday, the number of migrants crossing to the Kent coast in dinghy after dinghy is believed to have surpassed 1,000 in a single day for the first time.
Dozens of migrants began arriving in Kent from dawn again today after crossing the Channel unhindered as people traffickers used Britain's Indian summer and calm waters to send record numbers.
But by 5pm today, the figure for today was only around 200 migrants. MailOnline has asked the Home Office to comment on why the numbers appear down.
A border force worker carries a child among a group of migrants brought into Dover this morning after crossing from France
It came as Priti Patel said she was ready to withhold the £54million promised to France to block migrant crossings because boat-after-boat continues to land in Kent every day.
The Home Secretary met Conservative MPs last night and blamed the French for the significant numbers of people coming across the Channel, claiming she was prepared to pull the funding that was pledged less than two months ago if they do not stop three in four crossings by the end of the month, The Times reports.
But France has hit back at the Home Secretary over her threat to withhold the £54million she pledged.
The Ministry of the Interior told Patel that going back on the pledge would seriously damage efforts to limit the illegal trips.
And it warned that attempting to send would-be refugees straight back to France would be dangerous and break international law, after Tory MPs urged her to take the dramatic step to discourage others from taking the same route.
Meanwhile, Calais MP Pierre-Henri Dumont said: 'We will not be answering to blackmail. Quite simply if the money is pulled then the resources will drop and the migrants will increase.'
A group of people thought to be migrants are escorted to shore in Kingsdown, Kent, after being intercepted by an RNLI crew following a small boat incident in the Channel
Minister of the Interior Gerald Darmanin is travelling to London today and is set to have a showdown with Miss Patel about how best to tackle the record number of illegal crossings. More than 13,000 have arrived in the UK by boat this year.
