Mark White's Migration Watch: Channel crossings pass grim milestone with community tensions rising

Mark White points to 'big problem' for Britain as Channel crossings surge |

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Mark White

By Mark White


Published: 01/08/2025

- 00:00

Updated: 01/08/2025

- 08:57

In our new weekly series, Home and Security Editor Mark White provides you the latest on the small boats crisis

Unlike the establishment media, GB News has made it a key priority to keep our audience fully informed on the migrant crisis, an issue that for many is their number one concern.

From the daily illegal Channel crossings to the tensions around the housing of mainly young migrant men in the heart of our communities, the migrant crisis is wide-ranging and ever-changing.

In this weekly update, I'm hoping to keep you abreast of all the important developments.

The week began in Scotland, with our Prime Minister attempting to delicately navigate his way through the topic of illegal migration during meetings with the US President.


This was, to a large degree, a private visit for Donald Trump, ahead of the opening of his new golf course near Aberdeen.

But alongside the President in not one, but two chats with the media, there was plenty of scope for Sir Keir to end up in a metaphorical sand-trap.

When the inevitable questions came, comparing Starmer's immigration policies with Trump's, there were more than a few raised eyebrows as the PM told the President that on small boats, "We've done a lot of work stopping them coming".

The Prime Minister's boast came on a day when another 212 small boat migrants arrived in the UK.
In fact, across seven straight days, 1,000 migrants made the illegal journey from France.

Mark White's Migration Watch: Channel crossings pass grim milestone this week with community disorder expected

By midweek, a further 898 arrived in just one day, aboard 13 small boats.

It took the total number who crossed in 8 days to be not far short of 2,000.

Whatever Sir Keir might claim in front of the US President, the record numbers arriving in UK waters reveal an uncomfortable truth - for now at least, his small boat policies are failing.

This week, we also passed another grim milestone in terms of the number of Channel migrant crossings.

We reached 25,000 arrivals for the year so far. In fact, it's now more than 24,400 - an indication of how rapidly numbers tick up at this time of the year.

We are now firmly in the Summer months, when huge numbers of small boat arrivals are a regular occurrence.
Within the next six, possibly eight weeks, we will pass the 36,816 who arrived during the whole of last year.

In fact, we are firmly on course to overtake the biggest year on record for small boat crossings, when more than 46,000 Channel migrants reached the UK.

We are already more than 50 per cent ahead of the number who arrived at this point last year.

The strain on already tense communities took another notch up this week, with more protests outside asylum seeker hotels and other migrant accommodation.

Authorities are desperately concerned about the potential for disorder in some of those communities in the weeks ahead.

Sadly, there's nothing I've seen that leads me to conclude that tensions in some of these areas will do anything other than increase.

There was some positive news on Thursday in the efforts being made by UK law enforcement to try to go after the criminal people smugglers.

A National Crime Agency intelligence-led operation saw dozens of small boats seized in Bulgaria before they could be transported to the Channel.

As welcome as that seizure is, it was just 25 boats. To put that in context, in just the past seven days alone, 27 small boats were used to cross the Channel.

One thing I've learned in covering the Channel migrant crisis, the people smugglers have very robust supply lines. Those 25 seized boats will be quickly replaced.

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