When trucks go through a roundabout on their way to the Channel Tunnel, there is a moment - just a few seconds - when one can try to slip in between the axles and find a hiding spot, Mr. Amian said he had fled war in South Sudan four years ago, and had endured the crossing of the Mediterranean to Italy, short of food and water, after stops in Egypt and Libya.
Amian said it was his “dream to get to England,” which he described as “a strong country, with good education, and where the English language is spoken.” Sassd Amian, 25, a migrant from South Sudan, said he was pinning his hopes on the trucks bound for the Channel Tunnel.Ī graduate in architecture, Mr. In Calais, migrants hoping to get to Britain are getting increasingly desperate.
#Calair migrant mobs drivers
The attacks on truck drivers and motorists are on an epic scale. They also try to board lorries bound for cross-Channel ferries. Her report - which recommended improving the housing and working conditions of migrants as well as streamlining asylum applications - was criticized, even by members of her own party. The migrants, who are living in camps known as the Jungle on the edge of Calais, attempt to stow away on lorries headed for Eurotunnel, or jump or cut security fences to try to hide on Eurotunnel trains themselves. Macron’s party, La République en Marche.īut the politically explosive nature of immigration, especially five months before presidential elections in France, makes it difficult to consider new approaches, Ms. That was evidence that the authorities were hewing to the policy of making conditions in Calais as harsh as possible to dissuade others from coming, said Sonia Krimi, a co-author of the report and a lawmaker in Mr. According to the report, of all the money spent by the French and British in 2020 to deal with the migrant population along the French coast, about 85 percent was spent on security, and only 15 percent on health and other assistance. More than 5,000 migrants crossed the Channel last. In a damning report released last month, the National Assembly said that the French government’s migrant policy had been a failure and that it had led to violations of migrants’ rights. Gendarmes patrol the beach of Oye-Plage, near Calais, with a police helicopter overhead as they look for migrants trying to cross the Channel.
“We’ve been sounding the alarm for two years,” he said. Migrant rights groups said that aside from cracking down, the authorities have done little to address the surge in boat crossings.Īlain Ledaguenel, the president of a private organization that conducts sea rescues from Dunkirk, the city from which the migrants who died on Wednesday most likely departed, said that in recent months his team has been engaged in three times more sea rescues.