By Lise Kiennemann
Early one morning in March, Utopia 56, a refugee aid charity working in the north of France, received a message from a migrant attempting to cross the English Channel. "A person died in the river," read the text, accompanied by a location on the Aa Canal, a waterway that flows into the Channel.
The body of Jumaa Alhasan, a 27-year-old Syrian who had fled the war in his country, had disappeared in the canal. About two hours before the alert, Alhasan was on the bank of the Aa canal, waiting for a boat that was supposed to lead him to the English Channel and then the United Kingdom, where he planned to apply for asylum.
According to testimonies gathered by Utopia 56 and Mediapart, when Alhasan’s group was about to join the pneumatic boat going down the river with a group of migrants onboard, the police intervened. A moment of panic would have followed as the migrants were fearing arrest.
"His friends told us that Jumaa thought the canal was shallow and jumped straight in to try joining the boat, even though he didn't know how to swim," says Fleur Germain, a coordinator at Utopia 56. Friends looked on as Alhasan disappeared in the canal, returned to the surface, and sank again. Although the authorities were alerted, they concluded no one was missing and did not investigate further, according to Mediapart.
This particular night was favorable for crossings. The winds were light, the waves moderate, and the weather dry. Like Alhasan, several hundred migrants attempted to reach the UK. But Alhasan is not the only one who disappeared in the cold, dark waters of the Aa overnight. Further upstream, Rola Al Mayali, a 7-year-old Iraqi girl, was also found drowned after the boat she had boarded with her family capsized.
Crossing the English Channel on "small boats" has always been dangerous. It requires crossing at least 33 kilometers of freezing water, high waves, and often violent winds. It also means risking colliding with one of the 400 vessels that cross the strait every day. But experts and refugee advocates have seen an increase in migrant deaths during Channel crossings this year. At least 10 people have perished compared to 12 for all of 2023 and five in 2022. They attribute this trend to increasing police presence and increasingly dangerous journeys; overloaded boats are launched from more remote inland or southern locations, increasing the length and risk of the Channel crossing.
Like Alhasan & Al Mayali, 14 groups crossed or attempted to cross the Channel from the Aa Canal since early 2024, according to the prefecture, and the same phenomenon has been observed on other rivers, too.
"These are human tragedies which show that migrants are prepared to take any risk," says Sony Clinquart, the mayor of Grand Fort-Philippe, who was called to the scene when Alhasan’s body was discovered, on March 19.
In 2023, some 30 attempted crossings were recorded on the Canche, and 12 on the Athie, two rivers further south that also flow into the English Channel.
For the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC), a think tank that wrote a report on cross-channel migrant smuggling, this strategy is used to reach the sea more discreetly and avoid police patrols on the beaches. "Once the boat is in the water, the police don't intervene to avoid accidents," one of the researchers who worked on the report said. While these attempts remain marginal—about 40 were recorded in 2023, compared with 797 attempts according to the prefecture—they show the "smugglers" ability to adapt to police measures," according to the GI-TOC.
"Migrants may think that canals are not dangerous, but there are currents and mud in the Aa canal, and the depth is deceptive," Germain said.
South Departures increasing
One morning last month, a boat with 11 migrants found itself trapped in the Somme Bay, more than 80 kilometers south of Calais. It was 9 am, and the sea had receded because of the tide. The boat ran aground on the sand, preventing the migrants from going farther. They first tried to reach the coastline on foot, before realizing the shore was nearly 3 kilometers away. Numb with cold, they had to warm themselves by setting fire to their jackets and their own boat. They were finally rescued by the French National Sea Rescue Society (SNSM). One of them, who had hypothermia, was led to the hospital.
This incident illustrates a shift in migration routes. When small boat crossings took off in 2018, departures were concentrated around Calais, where migrants stay in camps before attempting to cross into the UK, and where the distance to England is the shortest. But over the past months, migrants have been seen starting further south.
"Starting from Calais, crossing is relatively straightforward. But in the Somme Bay, there are a lot of sandbanks, currents and tidal phenomena that complicate everything. If you don't know the bay, there's no point in trying", said Michel Souply, the president of the SNSM team of the town Cayeux-sur-Mer, where the incident occurred. From there, the nearest English coast is 85 kilometers away. That is almost three times farther than the distance separating Calais and Dover.
"Crossing the Channel by the shortest route takes four to five hours. Leaving from the Somme, it adds at least two hours," said Olivier Ternisien, the president of Osmose 62, a refugee aid association.
Yet, such attempts are multiplying in this area. Since early 2024, four rescue operations have occurred south of the Somme Bay, where no intervention had previously taken place, according to data from the French Ministry of Ecological Transition.
Utopia 56 is concerned that by starting farther south, migrants are moving away from the French-led rescue operations. The charity is based in Grande-Synthe and Calais, both farther north on the coast. "When migrants call us from the Somme Bay, it is sometimes more than 1 hour 30 minutes from where we are. It's complicated for us to help them," said Thomas Chambon, coordinator at Utopia 56.
For Chambon, these crossings are also becoming more dangerous because the boats are increasingly loaded. According to data from the UK Home Office and Border Force, boats arriving in the UK carried on average 48 migrants in 2023, compared with 41 in 2022 and 27 in 2021, whereas the type of used boat has not changed, according to the GI-TOC. Yet, heavier boats "dramatically increase the risk of capsizing", the research team says.
“Militarization” of the border
French and British authorities have recently made efforts to prevent people from crossing the English Channel. Since 2019, four agreements have been signed between the two countries, resulting in a gradual increase in French police patrolling the beaches.
To curb migrant crossings, the UK granted tens of millions of euros to France in 2022 and 2023. In return, France increased its security forces by 40%, deploying an additional 350 police officers and gendarmes. "Stopping the boats" was one of the five priorities presented by Rishi Sunak in 2023.
France claims such efforts prevent departures from beaches and are meant to "save lives and avoid new human tragedies in the Channel." Official data shows a 36% drop in migrant crossings across the Channel in 2023, which the British government attributes to its "relentless action."
Still, in the first trimester of 2024, crossings rose by more than 40% compared with the same period last year. For local associations, these measures are thus ineffective in deterring migrants who they say are “desperate.” “Some of them have taken more than six months to reach France and have overcome all kinds of obstacles. They tell us: 'We see England just in front of us. How do you expect us to stop there,” Ternisien said.
More than preventing crossings, these new measures encourage the commercialization of smuggling networks, the GI-TOC says.
"All the examples we studied - in the Libyan desert, in the Mediterranean - show that when a border is militarized, it pushes migrants towards smugglers, because it becomes more difficult to cross," they say.
In response to South and inland departures, prefectures have taken "measures to combat sea crossings" and "thwart the actions of smugglers."
In early April, 16 additional Gendarmerie reservists were added to the 32 already patrolling the Somme Bay coastline, and surveillance drones were deployed over rivers flowing into the Channel. Three "anti-migrant" floating barriers have also been installed on those waterways: one on the Canche, in August 2023, and two on the Authie, in September 2023 and January 2024.
"The pattern is repeating itself, with the state continuing to militarize the border," said Chambon, who fears these measures will lead migrants to take ever more risks. For him, the answer lies elsewhere: "If we do want to prevent these people from taking to the sea in these small boats, we must either welcome these people properly or set up legal and secure routes for them to reach the UK."
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