More than 35,000 migrants have crossed the Channel this year (Image: Getty)
“The smugglers who were still on the beach told us that it was normal for water to enter the boat”, Syrian Osama Ahmed revealed.
The 20-year-old Syrian, who was making his third attempt to cross the Channel in a month, was plunged into the water minutes later, as the boat carrying at least 60 people deflated.
Osama clung to the wreckage, already aware that someone had died after getting trapped inside the boat as it collapsed into itself.
The group of migrants remained in the water for around 90 minutes, before the rescue ships arrived.
The death toll in the Channel is rising (Image: Getty)
Smugglers have changed their tactics to avoid French police (Image: Getty)
As Osama was lifted from the water and taken to shore, he received the devastating news his father had been swept away, to his death.
Osama’s father is one of more than 70 people to have died this year, making it the deadliest on record for Channel crossings.
The boats have got bigger, and flimsier, with the smugglers streamlining their tactics to stay ahead of French police.
Rather than burying them in the sand, which was the preferred tactic, the criminals are now rushing them to the shoreline just minutes before they are launched.And they have adopted a “river taxi” model, which sees them collecting migrants along the beach after inflating the boat and pushing it into the water in a quiet river or canal connected to the Channel.
Sir has made “smashing the gangs” the central theme of his bid to end this crisis.
And the Prime Minister is relying on bolstering ties with Governments along the smuggling routes to snare the criminals, break up their supply chains, deny them access to boats and engines and prevent more deaths.
The UK has signed new agreements with Germany, Italy, Serbia, North Macedonia, Kosovo and Iraq.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s visit to Baghdad and Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, was significant.
Iraqi-Kurdish smuggling gangs control most of the beaches and camps in Northern France.
These gangs control migrant smuggling operations from Calais to Dunkirk, this newspaper understands, with territory split up according to where the criminals are from, such as Erbil, Sulaymaniyah, Ranya and Sharazoor.
Criminals from Ranya are said to control a large part of the territory between Calais and Dunkirk.
As a consequence, British officers and intelligence specialists will be based in Iraq to hunt after smuggling gang kingpins, Ms Cooper has confirmed.
But in France, the war with the smuggling gangs is being lost.
Successful prosecutions of smugglers are rare.
Law enforcement officials in Boulogne-sur-Mer, Lille and Calais admitted last month they only really catch low-level criminals.
The kingpins are rarely ever found, as they rely on their junior henchmen to fill up their boats.
These “facilitators” are the ones seen mingling with migrants in the camps in Grande-Synthe, near Dunkirk, and in Calais.
And the French police talk of overwhelming caseloads and a lack of resources, as the number of deaths rise.
As one French officer put it, in a recent interview: “There is both the feeling of not being able to prevent these tragedies from happening, but also of not always finding those responsible for these deaths.”
France is increasing the number of police and gendarmes on the coast by 175, bringing the total to 800.
But French officials know they are fundamentally chasing their tails, with the smugglers deploying lookouts before attempted crossings and vanishing into crowds of migrants, acting as though they were just a passenger trying to reach the UK, if the launch is thwarted.
This disappearing act is particularly common if the migrants are rescued at sea, with officers trying to discover who organised the crossing and who was piloting the boat.
And though there is no love for the evil smugglers, the migrants themselves will stay silent, sworn to secrecy through a combination of terror for their own safety and the enduring desire to reach the UK.
Criminal groups referred to as the “mafia” rule over the migrant camps in northern France, resorting to extreme violence and forcing those staying there to pay for goods handed out by charities, researchers have suggested.
Tents are often left for newcomers, including sleeping bags, blankets, clothes and kitchen equipment.
The asylum seekers, no matter how close they came to death on a previous crossing, always say they will try again.
And to do that, they need a smuggler.
In November, however, the National Crime Agency had a huge success when a “major supplier” of small boats to Channel migrant smugglers was arrested.
The Turkish national shipped the dinghies from Turkey and stored them in Germany, investigators believe.
The 44-year-old Turkish national was arrested at Schipol Airport in Amsterdam and will be extradited to Belgium.
The Daily Express understands he was one of the NCA’s top targets.
Analysts believe more migrants are being held further inland in France, in places such as Paris, Reims, Rouen, Arras, Lille and Cambrai.
But there is also evidence of asylum seekers being kept in Belgium, in safe houses near Brussels, Antwerp, Gent and Bruges.
Migrants are also known to regularly stay in Germany, with homes identified in Bonn, Cologne, Frankfurt, Essen, Dusseldorf, Bochum and Dortmund.
Berlin has confirmed it will “clarify” its laws to allow police to snare criminals using safehouses in the country, making it a criminal offence to “facilitate the smuggling” of asylum seekers.
The Home Office believes a new deal between the UK and Germany will “significantly increase the number of prosecutions made in relation to migrant smuggling”.
This is because migrants hoping to reach the UK are given key pieces of information for their journeys and structures are put in place to ensure the smuggling business continues to run smoothly between crossings.
For example, some criminals create safehouses to hold migrants in until they are ready to move them to the French coast.
Migrants board a smuggler’s inflatable dinghy in an attempt to cross the English Channel (Image: AFP via Getty Images)
Migrants board a smuggler’s inflatable dinghy on a French beach (Image: AFP via Getty Images)
But asylum seekers also stay in discounted hotel rooms which provide an array of services, including help shipping luggage to the UK.
Researchers from the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime said: “Testifying to increased streamlining of operations of smugglers, migrants stay in the transit hubs for much shorter periods of time (24 hours to three weeks) compared to the three or three months that was the norm until early 2021.”
This is why there is so much scepticism about Sir Keir’s plan.
Many Governments in Europe are switching tactics to deter migrants from illegally trying to enter the continent.
The Netherlands wants to sign an offshore migrant processing deal with Uganda to host its rejected asylum seekers before they are deported to their home countries.
The country’s PM, Dick Schoof, has said there is a “different atmosphere” in Europe on migration, adding that the European Commission was “looking favourably” on Italy’s offshore asylum processing deal with Albania.
And, to reinforce that point, a group of immigration hawks held talks this week to increase pressure on Brussels to boost migrant returns.
Denmark hosted the meeting, co-organised with Italy and the Netherlands, which was attended by European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen and the leaders of Cyprus, Greece, Malta, the Czech Republic, Poland, Sweden and Hungary.
A lot of the focus on the continent has been on Italy’s deals with Albania, Tunisia and Libya.
Sir is said to want to copy large sections of Giorgia Meloni’s plan.
The EU has paid Tunisia £88m to bolster border security and train its coastguard, while Italy has paid for patrol vessels and given its Government another £83m to support business, invest in education and renewable energy.
Italy has also trained the Libyan coastguard and signed a gas deal.
The approach is intended to offer incentives to residents to remain in the country as well as deterrents to stop them leaving.
And much has been made of Rome’s offshore asylum processing deal with Albania.
The sleepy rural village of Kakariq now hosts one of two purpose-built detention centres for migrants in Albania. Asylum seekers rescued by the Italian coastguard will be transported across the Adriatic Sea to Shëngjin, a 15-minute drive from the detention centre in Kakariq.
The detention centre and another facility in the port of Shëngjin are the result of a £560m deal between Giorgia Meloni, the Italian prime minister, and her Albanian counterpart Edi Rama.
Ms Meloni wants to process up to 3,000 male asylum seekers a month at the facility for the next five years.
Asylum seekers from 19 countries that Rome deems safe will have their claims processed in Albania.
Sir Keir has repeatedly said he would be interested in having a similar offshore asylum processing deal.
But this jars with his decision to scrap the Rwanda deportation scheme within hours of taking office on July 5.
Critics have highlighted how the Prime Minister axed the scheme before the first flight had even taken off – on July 24, so the merits of the scheme can never truly be assessed.
The repeatedly point to the National Crime Agency’s insistence that there needs to be a deterrence to prevent Channel crossings.
Labour argue that destroying the smuggling gangs is the deterrent.
The numbers paint a different picture.
In total, 35,040 have risked their lives in small boats this year.
But since the General Election, 21,446 migrants have crossed the English Channel.
Under the Labour leader, an average of 128 migrants have crossed the Channel in a staggering 377 boats.
This means each boat detected by Border Force was carrying an average of 57 people.
An average of 74 per day arrived in the 184 days before the General Election.
Analysis by this newspaper also shows 272 boats crossed the Channel, carrying 13,574 people between January 1 and July 4.
Sir Keir knows the public crave an end to the Channel migrant crisis.
But currently, the biggest deterrent to smugglers and asylum seekers is the weather.
High winds have prevented thousands more crossing this Winter, maritime sources believe.
And the Prime Minister knows the smugglers will not stop. Those arrested will be replaced.
So the PM’s decision to scrap the Rwanda scheme will rightly be viewed as a key moment in Britain’s bid to stop the small boats. Home Office sources, under Mr Sunak’s Government, said they had seen evidence of migrants changing their destinations and plans because of the threat of being deported to Kigali.
This year is the deadliest on record for Channel crossings.
And with each death, the Prime Minister will face more questions about why he scrapped Britain’s only deterrent.
Because the organised crime networks are already shifting their tactics, gleefully eyeing up crises in the Middle East as a potential source of new customers.
As one Border Force source told the Daily Express, the smugglers have become “numb” to the deaths.
The key will be to convince migrants climbing into an inflatable dinghy to cross the World’s busiest shipping lane that it is not worth their lives.