One person described the crossing as ‘suspicious’, as the incident is urgently reviewed by Home Office officials.
File image of a Border Force vessel delivering migrants to Dover after intercepting a small boat (Image: Getty)
Channel migrants who reached the Kent coast undetected may have made a decoy emergency call to distract coastguards, it is claimed. Fishermen, who were at sea at the time, reportedly said migrants on the small boat called 999 and claimed the dinghy was sinking, without providing a location.
It is believed this could have led to Border Force boats being sent to the middle of the Channel, where most issues unfold. Meanwhile, the migrant boat continued undetected before landing on a beach near Dover. Twenty-one migrants were detained by authorities after reaching Samphire Hoe, but up to 10 on board the boat are believed to be missing without having been processed.
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Channel migrants are usually brought to shore by Border Security Command or the RNLI (Image: Getty)
The incident on Tuesday afternoon, as well as another undetected crossing on Monday, are being urgently reviewed.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said the failure to intercept the boats was “not acceptable”.
According to The Telegraph, it is understood emergency services received a 999 call from people on board a migrant boat claiming they were sinking.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has ordered an urgent review (Image: Getty)
At about 09:40am, French authorities issued an alert for vessels to assist, but didn’t provide a position after the caller didn’t offer one.
Around two-and-a-half hours later, the Dover coastguard said the emergency was over with “all persons confirmed ashore, safe and well” and no further assistance was needed, according to reports.
A fisherman who heard the radio reports described it as “suspicious”.
They told The Telegraph: “When you see the boat when it came in, it looked in good condition. It didn’t look like it had drowning migrants in it. It’s all suspicious. It sounds like it could have been a decoy.”
Others suggested a mistake was a more likely explanation for what unfolded.
“I think it is more likely a cock-up,” a political source said. “You can overestimate the sophistication of a crossing when in most cases it is chaotic and fraught with danger.”
The Home Office declined to comment as its review continues.
Before this week, no small boats had officially been recorded as reaching Britain unaccompanied in over a year.
The thousands of migrants crossing the Channel are usually brought to shore by Border Security Command or RNLI boats.
On Thursday, the Border Force union said migrant boats are “definitely” arriving on British shores undetected.
ISU spokeswoman Lucy Moreton said: “If no-one sees them, no-one sees them.
“But we know that we’ve had abandoned vessels, we’ve had reports of uncontrolled landings all the way down to Falmouth.”
People smugglers are believed to be increasingly adopting new tactics for the crossings.
This includes using so-called mega dinghies and boats departing from more westerly beaches along France’s north coast.
Some 781 migrants crossed the Channel in small boats on Wednesday — the highest number on a single day so far this year.
Provisional Home Office figures show 18,565 migrants have made the journey in 2026 — down 42% on the equivalent point last year.
A guest on the BBC political programme likened small boat protests to having a “small penis”.
Question Time has gone too far this time (Image: BBC)
Question Time has truly gone too far this time, and I really can’t see a way back for the BBC politics programme. During last night’s episode, political activist and journalist Ash Sarkar made the explosive comment that people who are furious about small boat arrivals full of illegal migrants are like men with “small penises”.
The fury erupted after various protesters were jailed for violent behaviour – which, let me be clear, is despicable. 42-year-old Del Somerville was given a two year jail sentence for throwing a plastic bottle and swearing at police during an anti-migrant protest in Portsmouth. 38-year-old Shaun Thomson was also jailed earlier this year after admitting violent disorder during a protest outside a migrant hotel.
Violence is never right, and it’s entirely fair to call people lobbing projectiles “thugs”. But what’s not fair is extending that moniker to anyone raising perfectly valid concerns about small boat migrants.
One or two men do not represent the swathes of people up and down the country who are frightened of mass illegal immigration, when so much crime has also come from adult male migrants crossing the Channel.
In March this year, a man living in a migrant hotel was sent to a UK jail for sexual offences against three lone women who were simply walking to work. Earlier this month, another raped a woman on a night out – after being released from a UK jail for another sex attack.
The Home Office has been forced to hand out pamphlets telling said migrants not to rape, informing them that the age of consent in the UK is 16, and warning against domestic abuse.
Of course it isn’t all migrants. Of course plenty of UK residents and nationals are found guilty of the same crimes every day, but with migrant hotels sprouting up in small towns across the country and swathes of undocumented males entering the country, I don’t blame anyone for being scared. As a woman, it’s already frightening enough walking home alone at night.
So for Sarkar to compare said outrage to “small penis behaviour” feels more than a bit off, especially airing on the so-called “unbiased” BBC.
She fumed on the show: “I think that this is small penis behaviour, quite frankly. This is a bunch of guys who want to feel like big men because the missus says they can’t see the kids anymore.
“What I think is absurd is that when we’re talking about individuals being made to feel unsafe where they live, when we’re looking at boats being slashed on camera, children chanting into megaphones, ‘Let them drown’, you guys are saying well, it’s about the small boats. Well, maybe it’s also about the racism and the thuggery!”
Of course violence in any context is wrong. Of course I advocate for people’s safety, no matter whether they’re migrants arriving in small boats or British citizens. But expressing fear is natural, and suppressing fear and outrage would be censorship – to dismiss it as “small penis behaviour” simply went too far.
