The Home Office says 882 illegal immigrants crossed the English Channel on Tuesday, the biggest number for a single day this year.
This latest influx brings the provisional total for the number of people who have made the crossing so far in 2024 to 12,313.
When asked about it while campaigning for the general election in East Anglia, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told broadcasters: “In the last 12 months the numbers of people crossing the channel is actually down almost a third. That hasn’t happened before and it shows that we can make a difference. That is what I have been focused on doing.”
“There is always going to be days which are worse than others, but the choice at this election is about how do we solve this problem for good,” he added.
The prime minister said, “I have got a plan to do that and that is about getting a deterrent up and running, removing the incentive for people to come here.”
“It is as simple as that, if people come here illegally they shouldn’t be able to stay. We need to remove them somewhere else and if we can get that up and running then people will stop coming, and multiple other European countries agree with us,” he added.
Last year, at this same time, there were 10,472 crossings, which is 18 percent lower.
In 2022 there were 11,690.
Last year 29,437 immigrants crossed the Channel, down 36 percent on the record 45,774 who arrived in 2022.
Mr. Sunak has made stopping the illegal boat crossings one of his major policy pledges during his premiership.
The Safety of Rwanda Act—finally passed into law in April—coupled with the Illegal Migration Act, forms part of the Rwanda plan, would see asylum seekers who arrive in the country illegally sent to Rwanda.
Mr. Sunak has admitted no flights to Rwanda will take off before the July 4 election, and Labour says it will abolish the policy if it wins the election and would create a new “returns and enforcement unit” with an additional 1,000 staff to “fast track removals to safe countries for people who do not have the right to stay here.”
Reform Says It Will ‘Take Them Back to France’
It also pledged to create a new department of immigration and said its policy would be to “pick up illegal migrants out of boats and take them back to France.”Since Mr. Sunak called the election on May 22, 2,431 people have crossed the Channel.
In April 2022 the government struck a deal with Rwanda to send illegal immigrants there while their asylum claims are processed, but since that date 81,677 people have crossed the Channel.
On Wednesday, the deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats, Daisy Cooper, said, “What we really need to see is safe and legal routes reestablished because many of them were closed down.”
“That means around three-quarters of the people who are currently attempting to come here on small boats could actually apply from other countries and have their application dealt with in a safe way without them having to make that terrible, scary, risky journey,” she added.
