Migrant crossings: Why are more people crossing the Channel on the weekend?

Published

5 months ago

February 3, 2025

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More people are crossing the English Channel in small boats on the weekend. Our data analysis shows last year 40% of the total number of arrivals happened on a Saturday or Sunday.

We have been looking into possible reasons why many more people are arriving in small boats on the weekend, and the explanation might not be quite what you expect.

Here are a few theories.

French staffing and resources

One suggestion is that French border force, police and coastguard are not working to a consistent level seven days a week.

“Gangs have realised there are lower or less engaged staffing on weekends on the French side,” a former senior Home Office official who worked closely on deals with the French told Sky News.

A former immigration minister said they found it “frustrating” that “we were paying the French but weren’t able to specify operational deployments”.

They said it would “not surprise me if the French had fewer people at the weekend and the people smugglers have come to realise that”.

Hundreds of millions have been given by the UK to France to police the Calais coast, most recently almost £500m in 2023.

Another former senior government official with responsibility for borders said the French would be able to demonstrate that “hundreds or thousands of officers are working there” but “strategically it suits France to have the gust with us”.

But when we put this to the French side there was a pushback.

Marc de Fleurian, the Calais MP from Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party, says “blaming the other side of the Channel” is the “easy answer”.

He said it’s “cowardly to say it’s the other side’s fault”.

Pierre Henri Dumont, who was the Calais MP from 2017-2024, said: “The reality is you can have as many police officers as you want, but people will cross the Channel. If you have eight rather than 100 police officers that won’t change anything at all.”

A French coastguard source told Sky News there are the same staffing levels at the weekend, he says “any suggestion there is less staffing on the weekends is laughable and an easy thing to say”.

Sir Keir Starmer’s spokesman said the government’s work with the French saw “more than 28,000 dangerous unnecessary crossing attempts prevented last year”.

He added French law enforcing officers “routinely patrol beaches on weekends as well as during the week”.

Smuggler planning

Smuggler supply chains might be linked to a specific day for a range of reasons, for example, as one former senior Home Office official suggests, the fact “boat engines, or parts, might arrive on a Friday”.

Mr Dumont says smuggling networks rely on people to do small jobs, like transporting boats, who may also have day jobs in the week. He says the reasons behind the weekend uptick “are not necessarily predictable ones”.

Another factor may be that because French police tend not to intervene once a boat is in the water, many small boats set off from inland waterways. The canal-type waterways which come inland before the Channel are often full of fishing boats on weekdays, making it easier to launch from the waterways on weekends.

Another suggestion from a Home Office source is that while many migrants who cross the channel are based in the camps around Calais, many use public transport to arrive for a timed departure and are therefore reliant on transport timetables which may be more limited at different times of the week.

Weather coincidence

Leaked Home Office analysis shows that of the number of weekend days where small boat crossings were more likely because of good weather conditions was disproportionately high last year.

The figures show that 61 out of 197 days where the weather meant there was a realistic possibility, likely or highly likely there would be a channel crossing were weekend days. However, we only have figures for 2024, and it seems unlikely the weather alone could account for three years of higher crossings on weekend days.

World

At least 30 dead and 100 injured as armed groups clash in Syria, officials say

Published

8 hours ago

July 14, 2025

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At least 30 dead and 100 injured as armed groups clash in Syria, officials say

At least 30 people have been killed in the Syrian city of Sweida in clashes between local military groups and tribes, according to Syria’s interior ministry.

Officials say initial figures suggest around 100 people have also been injured in the city, where the Druze faith is one of the major religious groups.

The interior ministry said its forces will directly intervene to resolve the conflict, which the Reuters news agency said involved fighting between Druze gunmen and Bedouin Sunni tribes.

It marks the latest episode of sectarian violence in Syria, where fears among minority groups have increased since Islamist-led rebels toppled President Bashar al Assad in December, installing their own government and security forces.

The violence reportedly erupted after a wave of kidnappings, including the abduction of a Druze merchant on Friday on the highway linking Damascus to Sweida.

Last April, Sunni militia clashed with armed Druze residents of Jaramana, southeast of Damascus, and fighting later spread to another district near the capital.

But this is the first time the fighting has been reported inside the city of Sweida itself, the provincial capital of the mostly Druze province.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reports the fighting was centred in the Maqwas neighbourhood east of Sweida and villages on the western and northern outskirts of the city.

It adds that Syria’s Ministry of Defence has deployed military convoys to the area.

Western nations, including the US and UK, have been increasingly moving towards normalising relations with Syria.

Concerns among minority groups have intensified following the killing of hundreds of Alawites in March, in apparent retaliation for an earlier attack carried out by Assad loyalists.

That was the deadliest sectarian flare-up in years in Syria, where a 14-year civil war ended with Assad fleeing to Russia after his government was overthrown by rebel forces.

The city of Sweida is in southern Syria, about 24 miles (38km) north of the border with Jordan.

World

Meredith Kercher’s killer faces new trial over sexual assault allegations

Published

21 hours ago

July 13, 2025

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Meredith Kercher's killer faces new trial over sexual assault allegations

The man convicted of the murder of British student Meredith Kercher has been charged with sexual assault against an ex-girlfriend.

Rudy Guede, 38, was the only person who was definitively convicted of the murder of 21-year-old Ms Kercher in Perugia, Italy, back in 2007.

He will be standing trial again in November after an ex-girlfriend filed a police report in the summer of 2023 accusing Guede of mistreatment, personal injury and sexual violence.

Guede, from the Ivory Coast, was released from prison for the murder of Leeds University student Ms Kercher in 2021, after having served about 13 years of a 16-year sentence.

Since last year – when this investigation was still ongoing – Guede has been under a “special surveillance” regime, Sky News understands, meaning he was banned from having any contact with the woman behind the sexual assault allegations, including via social media, and had to inform police any time he left his city of residence, Viterbo, as ruled by a Rome court.

Guede has been serving a restraining order and fitted with an electronic ankle tag.

The Kercher murder case, in the university city of Perugia, was the subject of international attention.

Ms Kercher, a 21-year-old British exchange student, was found murdered in the flat she shared with her American roommate, Amanda Knox.

The Briton’s throat had been cut and she had been stabbed 47 times.

Ms Knox and her then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were placed under suspicion.

Both were initially convicted of murder, but Italy’s highest court overturned their convictions, acquitting them in 2015.

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IDF blames ‘technical error’ after Gaza officials say children collecting water killed in strike

Published

23 hours ago

July 13, 2025

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IDF blames 'technical error' after Gaza officials say children collecting water killed in strike

The Israeli military says it missed its intended target after Gaza officials said 10 Palestinians – including six children – were killed in a strike at a water collection point.

Another 17 people were wounded in the strike on a water distribution point in Nuseirat refugee camp, said Ahmed Abu Saifan, an emergency physician at Al Awda Hospital.

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said it had intended to hit an Islamic Jihad militant but a “technical error with the munition” had caused the missile to fall “dozens of metres from the target”.

The IDF said the incident is under review, adding that it “works to mitigate harm to uninvolved civilians as much as possible” and “regrets any harm to uninvolved civilians”.

Officials at Al Awda Hospital said it received 10 bodies after the Israeli strike on the water collection point and six children were among the dead.

Ramadan Nassar, who lives in the area, said around 20 children and 14 adults were lined up Sunday morning to fill up water.

When the strike occurred, everyone ran and some, including those who were severely injured, fell to the ground, he said.

In total, 19 people were killed in Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip on Sunday, local health officials said.

Two women and three children were among nine killed after an Israeli strike on a home in the central town of Zawaida, officials at Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital said.

Israel has claimed it hit more than 150 targets in the besieged enclave in the past day.

The latest strikes come after the Israel military opened fire near an aid centre in Rafah on Saturday. The Red Cross said 31 people were killed.

The IDF has said it fired “warning shots” near the aid distribution site but it was “not aware of injured individuals” as a result.

The war in Gaza started in response to Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, which killed 1,200 people and saw about 250 taken hostage.

More than 58,000 Palestinians have since been killed, with more than half being women and children, according to Gaza’s health ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count.

US President Donald Trump has said he is closing in on another ceasefire agreement that would see more hostages released and potentially wind down the war.

But after two days of talks this week with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, there were no signs of a breakthrough, as a new sticking point emerged over the deployment of Israeli troops during the truce.

Hamas still holds 50 hostages, with fewer than half of them believed to be alive, after most of the rest were released in ceasefire agreements or other deals.