‘They are not welcome!’ Reform MP fury as 609 illegal migrants arrive in single day

Reform UK MP Rupert Lowe has voiced outrage after official government statistics revealed an enormous number of illegal migrants reached Britain yesterday.

The Home Office confirmed that a whopping 609 individuals arrived on Britain’s shore on Thursday, breaking what had been a sustained run of days with no crossings.

The figure is record-breaking, marking the highest number of crossings ever seen over winter – from December to February – since the small boats crisis began three years ago.

Mr Lowe blasted: “These individuals should be immediately detained, and then deported as soon as is feasibly possible.”

“Send a message of undeniable zero-tolerance. They are NOT welcome.”

“Then, and only then, will the boats stop.”

Tory shadow Home Secretary blasted the figures as a “day of shame for Labour”.

He told the Express: “The huge number of illegal crossings shows Labour is failing to tackle small boats.

“They cancelled the Rwanda deterrent before even started. If they had allowed those Rwanda flights to start as planned in July, illegal immigrants would not bother attempting to cross.

“Labour is shamefully failing us on illegal immigration and leaving our borders undefended. Since the election, crossings are up 18% compared to the same timeast year, whereas in 2023 got the numbers down by a third. 21,000 have illegally entered the country since the election – shaming Labour”

Poor weather made boat crossings very difficult over the past week, however the calm weather yesterday saw a rush to get across.

Reacting to the figures, ‘s spokesman insisted the Government is clear their priority on small boat crossings is to cut both illegal and legal migration.

He said: “The PM has said there is a broken asylum system, and of course these numbers need to be reduced.”

“This is the chaos that this government inherited.

“We put in place a serious and credible plan to bring order to the asylum system by smashing the smuggling gangs through our new border security command, tackling the problem up stream with international collaboration, ramping up returns for those with no right to be here.”

Yesterday’s figure takes the total arrivals for December over 1,000, and the total for the year over 34,000.

However on nine of the 12 days recorded so far, there were no crossings at all.

Thursday was the highest number of crossings since October 18.

It comes after Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, signed a deal with her German counterpart which will introduce a new law in Germany making it a specific criminal offence to facilitate migrant smuggling towards the UK.

The Government says this will allow German prosecutors to tackle the supply and storage of equipment used in small boat crossings.

Today British police opened talks with China demanding a crackdown on the manufacture and export of small boat parts including engines.

Over the past year, sturdier boats and reliable engines have been phased out, being replaced by flimsier vessels.

Rob Jones, the National Crime Agency’s director general for operations, described the current boats of looking like “little more than a paddling pool” using Chinese-built engines.

He pointed to this decline in quality as a reason for the record number of deaths this year, which now total more than 70.