Expdonaloaded News; Calais illegal immigrant crisis: P.M warns Britain is ‘no safe haven’

Expdonaloaded blog

Britain will not become a “safe haven” for migrants in Calais, David Cameron has warned, after hundreds continued their attempts to reach the UK. The prime minister warned illegal immigrants would be removed from the UK, as migrants told the BBC they remained determined to reach Britain. Mr Cameron was speaking after people gathered for a third night at fencing at the Channel Tunnel freight terminal. Over 3,500 attempts have been made this week to get into the tunnel terminal.
Several hundred migrants were escorted away from the terminal by French police on Wednesday night – the third night of large-scale attempts to storm the terminal. As night fell, the road towards the Channel Tunnel started to come alive. Groups of 10 or 12 migrants, moving steadily along the darkened highway, jackets pulled close, hoods up. After a day of discussion in Paris and London over how to secure the tunnel, and fresh deployments of riot police, the determination of Calais’ migrants seems unchanged. People like Jamal – an Ethiopian who arrived here on Wednesday. He said he’d spent most of his adult life doing military service in the Ethiopian army, had spent 10 days drifting in the Mediterranean, and had crossed six different European countries to get here. Not once had his dream of reaching England wavered. For Jamal, a barbed wire fence, or brush with police, might change his tactics, but probably not his goal. The fresh attempts came despite the death of a man, believed to be a Sudanese national and aged between 25 and 30, who was crushed by a lorry on Tuesday. Nine people have been killed attempting to cross the Channel in the past month. Speaking in Vietnam during his tour of South East Asia, Mr Cameron said the French had sent an extra 120 police to Calais and the UK was investing in fencing and security. “Everything that can be done will be done to make sure our borders are secure and make sure that British holidaymakers are able to go on their holidays,” he said. The prime minister said the situation was “very testing” because there was a “swarm of people coming across the Mediterranean, seeking a better life”. He warned illegal immigrants would be removed from the UK “so people know it’s not a safe haven”. The Refugee Council attacked Mr Cameron’s use of the word “swarm” as “irresponsible, dehumanising language”. The last official estimates suggest there are about 3,000 migrants in the port town in northern France. It is not known how many migrants have reached Britain in recent months via the tunnel although MP Keith Vaz said police had told him 148 were held in Folkestone on Tuesday after about 2,000 migrants breached security in Calais. Raihan Jan, 24, a clerk from Afghanistan, said he had travelled through Iran, Turkey, Greece and Italy before reaching Calais four days ago. “We heard that one guy died and we know it’s very dangerous, but there is not another way to go the UK,” he said. English literature graduate Mohammad Al-Mohammad, 26, said he had fled Syria’s civil war, arriving in France three months ago. “I have tried maybe nine or 10 times to get to the tunnel but I have failed,” said Mr Al-Mohammad, from Aleppo. “I am seeking peace in the United Kingdom.” Eurotunnel said it had blocked 37,000 migrants trying to get to Britain since January, describing the problem as a “nightly assault” by thousands of migrants. The rail shuttle has been delayed in recent days, but is now operating to schedule. Operation Stack – where lorries park on Kent’s M20 when Channel crossings are disrupted – is to continue into the weekend. Parties from across the political divide have called on the government to push France to do more to resolve the situation. Conservative MP David Davies echoed calls for the Army to be sent to Calais and and urged the government to build camps in the countries migrants were from so they could be “sent back in a kind and humane fashion”. Senior UN official Peter Sutherland said demands for migrants to be kept out of the UK were “a xenophobic response to the issue of free movement”, adding: “The debate in the UK is grossly excessive in terms of Calais.”