A senior Home Office official has praised the French for intercepting 28,000 illegal immigrants and destroying more than 1,000 boats but has admitted the number of people crossing the English Channel was still “unacceptable.”
Dan O’Mahoney, the Home Office’s Clandestine Channel Threat Commander, told the Home Affairs Committee on Wednesday 38,000 people had crossed the channel in 936 small boats this year.
He said a further 28,000 migrants had been stopped from crossing by the French authorities, who had also destroyed 1,072 boats.
O’Mahoney said there had been an “exponential” rise in the number of Albanian migrants crossing the channel, from 50 in 2020 to 800 last year and 12,000 so far this year….