Before dawn on Thursday this week, a group of migrants launched a rickety rubber dinghy off the shore near Calais to cross the English Channel.
By nightfall that evening — and thanks to some help from the French authorities — they were relaxing in warm beds in a comfortable West London hotel, their bellies full thanks to the generosity of the British taxpayer.
Door to door, the migrants’ journey from a beach in northern France to a £100-a-night four-star hotel took less than 24 hours. And the Mail tracked them every step of the way.
Despite the Government’s ambitious plans to send migrants to Rwanda for processing — a move that was partly intended to dent Britain’s attractiveness as a destination for illegal migration — the flow of dangerous and overloaded boats towards the white cliffs of Dover continues, swelling the traffickers’ coffers.
This year alone, more than 7,000 migrants have arrived in England by boat.
And as reports emerge that the numbers processed in Rwanda could be far smaller than expected — as few as 300 per year, according to one Home Office model — concerns are now being raised that the scheme could even increase migrants crossing the Channel in the short term.
This week, one French MP claimed that traffickers are telling thousands of Iranians, Iraqis and African nationals in France to ‘cross quickly’ this summer, to win asylum in Britain before the Rwanda flights begin.
British Border Force officers inspect migrants arriving at Dover on dinghies earlier today
The Mail has also learnt that 25 migrants housed at a hotel in the north of England have run away from it to live illegally in this country, to avoid being sent to Africa.
Two young Iraqi Kurds living in a former Army barracks in Kent also told us defiantly that they had spent £3,200 on boat ‘tickets’ specifically from France to England They were, they joked, not tickets to Rwanda. The duo promised to refuse to go to Africa if the authorities tried to send them there.
But what of the 23 migrants whose ‘express’ journey to England the Mail tracked this week?
Their trip began at about 1am British time on Thursday, on a beach near the town of Gravelines, 15 miles from Calais.
The migrants assembled at the pre-arranged location, their dinghy having been brought there — along with its outboard motor — by traffickers.
Some 90 minutes after they pushed off, their boat was spotted by FS Laplace, a French government vessel ostensibly patrolling the Calais coast to stop migrant boats and turn them back.
Using ship-tracking software, the Mail has seen how the French ship halted its patrol and began to move towards the migrants’ dinghy as it travelled north towards the English coast.
FS Laplace then changed course towards English waters, away from Calais, and began to escort the migrants in the direction of Dover.
At 6.07am, in the middle of the Channel, FS Laplace met the British Border Force vessel Hurricane to arrange a handover of the 23 migrants.
In a rendezvous organised on maritime radio, Laplace and Hurricane sailed close to one another as they set out the
