LONDON: Britain must use every possible tactic to halt the “vile trade” of traffickers bringing record numbers of migrants across the Channel, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Wednesday.
Asked by an MP from his Conservatives when Britain would take direct action to send back boats coming from France, Johnson condemned “the cruel behavior of the gangsters, the criminal masterminds” behind the crossings.
He said they were taking money from “desperate frightened people” to take them on a “very, very dangerous journey” across one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes.
The government said that a record number of 828 people crossed over on a single day in late August, as traffickers take advantage of favorable late-summer weather.
The Home Office said 785 migrants arrived on Monday, the second highest daily total this year.
AFP witnessed a group of migrants arriving on a beach in Dungeness on the coast of southeast England on Tuesday after being rescued by a lifeboat.
On Wednesday, one local resident who charters fishing boats said police “hadn’t been able to keep up” with the number of arrivals this week.
“I found five (migrants) sitting over on the beach the other morning — they’d burnt their mobile phones in a fire,” the man, who declined to be named, told AFP.
“You used to get a boatload now and again. Now you’re looking at three, four, five, if not more, in a day.”
The growing number of boats is proving increasingly embarrassing for the government, which has repeatedly vowed to clamp down on the arrivals and pledged tighter border controls after its exit from the European Union.
Johnson praised interior minister Priti Patel for dealing with the problem “in the best possible way, which is to make sure that they don’t leave those French shores.”
In cooperation with Britain, France has doubled police officer numbers on its beaches, preventing more than 10,000 crossing attempts.
But Johnson added that “clearly as time goes on and this problem continues, we are going to have to make sure that we use every possible tactic at our disposal to stop what I think is a vile trade.”
MPs are scrutinizing proposed government legislation that would make it harder for those who enter the UK to stay by claiming asylum.
Controversially, it would make it a criminal offense to knowingly arrive in the UK without permission.
Johnson said migrants should “understand that there is a price to pay if they come to this country in an illegal fashion.”
Patel was due to hold talks with her French counterpart Gerald Darmanin on Wednesday.
British media reports have suggested London could withhold millions of pounds in funding to help tackle the problem if more was not done.
But a French interior ministry source said there had “never been any question of making payment conditional on numerical targets.”
“Such an approach would reflect a serious loss of confidence in our cooperation,” the source said.
UK must halt ‘vile’ migrant smuggling across Channel, PM says
https://arab.news/ggmee
UK must halt ‘vile’ migrant smuggling across Channel, PM says
Rubio says technical talks with Denmark, Greenland officials over Arctic security have begun
- US Secretary of State on Wednesday appeared eager to downplay Trump’s rift with Europe over Greenland
WASHINGTON: Technical talks between the US, Denmark and Greenland over hatching an Arctic security deal are now underway, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday.
The foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland agreed to create a working group aimed at addressing differences with the US during a Washington meeting earlier this month with Vice President JD Vance and Rubio.
The group was created after President Donald Trump’s repeated calls for the US to take over Greenland, a Danish territory, in the name of countering threats from Russia and China — calls that Greenland, Denmark and European allies forcefully rejected.
“It begins today and it will be a regular process,” Rubio said of the working group, as he testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “We’re going to try to do it in a way that isn’t like a media circus every time these conversations happen, because we think that creates more flexibility on both sides to arrive at a positive outcome.”
The Danish Foreign Ministry said Wednesday’s talks focused on “how we can address US concerns about security in the Arctic while respecting the red lines of the Kingdom.” Red lines refers to the sovereignty of Greenland.
Trump’s renewed threats in recent weeks to annex Greenland, which is a semiautonomous territory of a NATO ally, has roiled US-European relations.
Trump this month announced he would slap new tariffs on Denmark and seven other European countries that opposed his takeover calls, only to abruptly drop his threats after a “framework” for a deal over access to the mineral-rich island was reached, with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte’s help. Few details of the agreement have emerged.
After stiff pushback from European allies to his Greenland rhetoric, Trump also announced at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week that he would take off the table the possibility of using American military force to acquire Greenland.
The president backed off his tariff threats and softened his language after Wall Street suffered its biggest losses in months over concerns that Trump’s Greenland ambitions could spur a trade war and fundamentally rupture NATO, a 32-member transatlantic military alliance that’s been a linchpin of post-World War II security.
Rubio on Wednesday appeared eager to downplay Trump’s rift with Europe over Greenland.
“We’ve got a little bit of work to do, but I think we’re going to wind up in a good place, and I think you’ll hear the same from our colleagues in Europe very shortly,” Rubio said.
Rubio during Wednesday’s hearing also had a pointed exchange with Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Virginia, about Trump repeatedly referring to Greenland as Iceland while at Davos.
“Yeah, he meant to say Greenland, but I think we’re all familiar with presidents that have verbal stumbles,” Rubio said in responding to Kaine’s questions about Trump’s flub — taking a veiled dig at former President Joe Biden. “We’ve had presidents like that before. Some made a lot more than this one.”
