On a French beach with the migrants defying Mahmood
Desk report: An Iraqi child no older than nine unclipped his life jacket in tears. He had been outmuscled in the scrum to board a small boat as it pulled into Gravelines beach, down the coast from Dunkirk.
Left behind with his mother and younger sister, he put up two defiant middle fingers and launched a volley of insults at the French police, who stood and shrugged from the shoreline.
A flotilla of at least five dinghies overflowing with migrants then crossed the Channel, days after the Home Secretary had announced sweeping reforms to deter illegal migration.
Where successful asylum seekers had previously been granted refugee status for five years, they will now have their right to remain reviewed every 30 months. If their country is deemed safe enough for them to return, they will be sent back.
Announcing a raft of new measures over the weekend, Shabana Mahmood said the “generosity” of Britain’s asylum system was incentivising Channel crossings and bankrolling human traffickers.
“We must make it less attractive for illegal migrants to come here,” she said.
Dawn broke on Tuesday only to reveal that the Home Secretary’s words had done little to dissuade the migrants.
Two French warships, a rescue vessel and a rescue vessel waved through a convoy of small boats as they rounded the corner from Dunkirk and entered the shallows to pick up their passengers.
Hundreds of migrants broke cover from the dunes on Gravelines beach, led by smugglers who berated and corralled them into groups.
Waist-deep in water, they threw themselves at the overloaded dinghies, leaving behind those too weak to fight their way on board.
French police, armed with tear gas, batons and riot shields, filmed the melee on their phones from a safe distance before the boats turned and chugged their way into the Channel.
Migrants amassing in northern France in the days before the crossing told The Telegraph that they remained undeterred in their ambition to reach the UK.
In a sprawling camp on the outskirts of Dunkirk, borne from the embers of the “Calais Jungle”, which was demolished and torched a decade ago, a 31-year-old Eritrean migrant beamed when he heard about Ms Mahmood’s measures.
“Thirty months is a long time! There is nothing for us here,” he said, looking out over the shanty town strewn with its mountains of litter, eye-watering barrels of burning plastic and rancid, overflowing portable toilets.
He had been saved by the Ocean Viking search and rescue ship in the Mediterranean, trekked through Italy and spent four months in the Dunkirk camp, but he was determined not to fall short of reaching the UK.
“We are afraid of the journey,” he said as the sunlight bounced of foil blankets cast aside after failed crossing attempts, “but we will go.”
Total crossings are expected to have exceeded 2,500 in the bitterly cold and wet start to 2026, adding to the 41,472 migrants who made the journey last year, the second-highest annual figure on record.