Fifty migrants packed into a floundering rubber dinghy in the Channel were picked up by a Border Force vessel today after refusing to be rescued by a French Navy warship.
In a two-hour operation, Border Force vessel Ranger raced from the Kent coast to the centre of the Channel to bring the ‘agitated’ migrants into Dover.
Videos and maritime radio messages between Ranger and the warship Formentin, obtained by the Mail, reveal a high level of collaboration between the French and British over organising the flimsy dinghy’s journey safely to the UK.
The migrants are understood to have turned down the French navy’s offer of rescue to avoid being returned to France and losing the chance of claiming asylum in Britain.
They arrived at Dover this morning around the same time data from the Office for National Statistics revealed UK net migration soared to a record 606,000 people last year.
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