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
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UK must halt ‘vile’ migrant smuggling across Channel, PM says
Trump set to repeal scientific finding that serves as basis for US climate change policy
- The endangerment finding is the legal underpinning of nearly all climate regulations under the Clean Air Act for motor vehicles, power plants and other pollution sources that are heating the planet
WASHINGTON: The Trump administration on Thursday will revoke a scientific finding that long has been the central basis for US action to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change, the White House announced.
The Environmental Protection Agency will issue a final rule rescinding a 2009 government declaration known as the endangerment finding. That Obama-era policy determined that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare.
President Donald Trump and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin will “formalize the rescission of the 2009 Obama-era endangerment finding” at a White House ceremony, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday.
The action “will be the largest deregulatory action in American history, and it will save the American people $1.3 trillion in crushing regulations,” she said. The bulk of the savings will stem from reduced costs for new vehicles, with the EPA projecting average per vehicle savings of more than $2,400 for popular light-duty cars, SUVs and trucks. Leavitt said.
The endangerment finding is the legal underpinning of nearly all climate regulations under the Clean Air Act for motor vehicles, power plants and other pollution sources that are heating the planet. It is used to justify regulations, such as auto emissions standards, intended to protect against threats made increasingly severe by climate change — deadly floods, extreme heat waves, catastrophic wildfires and other natural disasters in the United States and around the world.
Legal challenges would be certain for any action that effectively would repeal those regulations, with environmental groups describing the shift as the single biggest attack in US history on federal efforts to address climate change.
EPA press secretary Brigit Hirsch said the Obama-era rule was “one of the most damaging decisions in modern history” and said EPA “is actively working to deliver a historic action for the American people.”
Trump, who has called climate change a “hoax,” previously issued an executive order that directed EPA to submit a report on “the legality and continuing applicability” of the endangerment finding. Conservatives and some congressional Republicans have long sought to undo what they consider overly restrictive and economically damaging rules to limit greenhouse gases that cause global warming.
Zeldin, a former Republican congressman who was tapped by Trump to lead EPA last year, has criticized his predecessors in Democratic administrations, saying they were “willing to bankrupt the country” in an effort to combat climate change.
Democrats “created this endangerment finding and then they are able to put all these regulations on vehicles, on airplanes, on stationary sources, to basically regulate out of existence ... segments of our economy,″ Zeldin said in announcing the proposed rule last July. ”And it cost Americans a lot of money.”
Peter Zalzal, a lawyer and associate vice president of the Environmental Defense Fund, countered that the EPA will be encouraging more climate pollution, higher health insurance and fuel costs and thousands of avoidable premature deaths.
Zeldin’s push “is cynical and deeply damaging, given the mountain of scientific evidence supporting the finding, the devastating climate harms Americans are experiencing right now and EPA’s clear obligation to protect Americans’ health and welfare,” he said.
Zalzal and other critics noted that the Supreme Court ruled in a 2007 case that planet-warming greenhouse gases, caused by burning of oil and other fossil fuels, are air pollutants under the Clean Air Act.
Since the high court’s decision, in a case known as Massachusetts v. EPA, courts have uniformly rejected legal challenges to the endangerment finding, including a 2023 decision by the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Following Zeldin’s proposal to repeal the rule, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine reassessed the science underpinning the 2009 finding and concluded it was “accurate, has stood the test of time, and is now reinforced by even stronger evidence.”
Much of the understanding of climate change that was uncertain or tentative in 2009 is now resolved, the NAS panel of scientists said in a September report. “The evidence for current and future harm to human health and welfare created by human-caused greenhouse gases is beyond scientific dispute,” the panel said.
