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UK Armed Forces Asked to Help Deal With Migrant Boats Crossing Channel

Reuters

   LONDON - Britain's armed forces have been asked to help deal with boats
   carrying migrants across the Channel from France, the Defense Ministry
   said Saturday after a spate of arrivals on the southern English coast.

   Taking advantage of a spell of hot weather and calm seas, hundreds of
   people including children and pregnant women have made the dangerous
   33-km (21-mile) crossing in recent days, many in overloaded rubber
   dinghies and other small vessels.

   The Defense Ministry said it had received a formal request from the
   Home Office, or interior ministry, to assist the UK Border Force with
   its operations in the Dover Straits.

   "We are assessing the requirements ... and are working hard to identify
   how we can most effectively assist," the Defense Ministry said in a
   statement.

   A Home Office spokeswoman declined to comment.

   300-plus arrivals

   More than 200 people arrived on the English coast on Thursday, followed
   by 130 on Friday, and media reported more arrivals on Saturday as the
   hot weather persisted.

   A junior Home Office minister in charge of immigration compliance,
   Chris Philp, called the rise in arrivals "shameful" and sought to put
   pressure on France ahead of a meeting with his French counterpart in
   Paris next week.

   "The French need to stop these illegal migrants from getting in the
   water in the first place," he said in an opinion column published in
   Saturday's Daily Telegraph newspaper, adding that Britain would seek to
   return to France those who made it across.

   France's interior ministry said surveillance teams on the northern
   coast were intercepting migrants daily and it had mobilized extra
   resources. It said five times as many migrant boats had been caught
   between January and July as were caught during the same period in 2019.

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