This may be about to change. The French Ministry of the Interior told AFP that they want a change in the rules to allow officers to venture up to 300 meters into the water. Both UK and French governments hope this new policy will be in place before the Anglo-French summit in July. It would mark a new stage in the cat-and-mouse game between authorities and smuggling gangs, but will it solve the small boats crisis?

Last year, 38,023 people arrived in the UK on small boats, a 22% increase on the previous year (though still less than the peak in 2022). Small boat arrivals make up 86% of detected irregular arrivals. But this does not necessarily mean that 86% of irregular entrants come on small boats. Far from slipping unseen onto empty beaches, the overladen and unseaworthy vessels are the most visible and best detected route of arrival.

The busy waters between England and France are so well monitored that “not a single migrant has reached the UK on a small boat undetected” since new surveillance aircraft began patrolling in 2024. The De Havilland Dash 8 planes are equipped with radar, cameras, and other detection equipment, feeding data to a control center at Lydd airfield in Kent. Patrolling continuously during peak crossing season, they are also used against drug smugglers and other criminal and security targets.

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These are just the latest additions to the high-tech surveillance arsenal. In 2019, the Home Office entered a £1 billion contract with drone company Tekever, whose low-flying AR5 UAVs use video and infra-red sensors, as well as more conventional ship-tracking technologies, to monitor small boat movements in real time. Footage from one of the drones was used to convict Iraqi people smuggler Rebwar Ahmed in 2020, after the inflatable boat on which he was ferrying 20 passengers was intercepted by a Border Force cutter.

Rishi Sunak’s 2023 deal with France included nearly £500 million towards joint operations, including more drones and a joint Zonal Coordination Center to bring together all the intelligence gathered by the many eyes in the sky. Drones equipped with infra-red night vision are now operating over the French coast.

Since November 2024, the UK Home Office has also been using a satellite monitoring system provided by Luton-based Telespazio UK. Their SEonSE (Smart Eyes on SEas) platform claims not only to detect vessels, but also to show their “estimated size, speed and direction… historical track analysis… list of anomalous events in which the vessel was involved, and aggregated risk assessment”.

From drones to orbiting satellites, there is no shortage of data about who and what is moving on the waters around the British Isles. Smuggling in people, drugs, or anything else has never been harder.

Nevertheless, record numbers of people are arriving on UK shores via dangerous sea routes, and record numbers are perishing in the attempt. In 2024, 73 people are known to have died, more than the total of the previous six years. All this data may help border authorities to understand patterns of movement, and to identify the gangs and individuals organizing the crossings, but meanwhile the little boats keep setting off, overloaded with their human cargo.

One problem is that moving from observation to intervention is risky, a fact which the people smugglers (and their passengers) can use to their own advantage. Many of those who have perished, either by drowning or being crushed in overloaded boats, do so within sight of the French coast. One reason for the policy of non-intervention once people are in the water, however shallow, was that French police have been unwilling to risk being blamed for causing deaths while trying to prevent departures.

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Trying to turn back overloaded boats once at sea is also potentially dangerous. Greek coastguards who intercepted a fishing vessel laden with hundreds of would-be migrants to Europe in 2023 now face criminal charges for “causing a shipwreck” and “exposing others to danger” by attempting to tow it, after monitoring its movements for 15 hours. Most of the people on the fishing boat drowned when it capsized.

This leaves border forces in a difficult position, as the obligation — legal and moral — to protect lives at sea outweighs the imperative to prevent irregular entry to the UK. Knowing this, people smugglers can presume on the duty of coastguards and other vessels to take their customers ashore for processing. However, they can also refuse to cooperate with French authorities, who may not risk endangering lives at sea by attempting to turn back boats or take individuals into custody.

People smugglers also adapt their methods to changes in policing. Instead of piloting the boats themselves, they will offer a free passage in exchange for steering the boat. In 2024 would-be asylum seeker Ibrahima Bah was convicted of manslaughter, after accepting a free passage in return for piloting an overloaded and unseaworthy boat in 2022. At least four men drowned when it sank.

Some have blamed the increasing overloading of the small boats — now carrying an average of 53 passengers, compared with 13 in 2020 — on the success of French and other authorities in confiscating or destroying them before launch. Boats are harder to come by and more expensive, and every launch brings greater risk of detection, incentivizing fewer launches with more passengers per boat.

In response to increased surveillance of French beaches, people smugglers have resorted to launching boats elsewhere before collecting passengers who wade out to meet them, sometimes watched by police officers who are not authorized to stop them. It is hoped that the new French policy will impede this development, though fears of endangering lives by doing so will remain.

Improved intelligence and observation is only part of a long, strategic game between the authorities, the people trying to cross the Channel, and those making a lucrative business out of getting them on the water.

But is the focus on small boat crossings misplaced? Most small boat arrivals apply for asylum on arrival, and over two-thirds of those applications are granted, a higher proportion than those applying from other routes. This suggests that most small boat arrivals intend to seek legitimate status to remain in the UK, unlike arrivals by less visible routes, who may seek to stay unofficially and work in the gray economy.

Small boat arrivals also make up only a third of all asylum claims, and around 10% of total net immigration. Other irregular arrivals include people arriving at ports or airports without correct documentation, or entering illicitly — concealed in freight lorries, for example — and only detected later, if ever.

Over a third of asylum claims are made by people who travelled to the UK legally on a visa, to work, study or visit, and subsequently claimed asylum in order to stay. Others who arrive with a visa may simply outstay it, without claiming asylum. Over three million visas were granted in 2024, over a million visitors got an ETA (Electronic Travel Authorization) for a short stay, and others did not need either to enter the country.

All of this suggests that high-tech surveillance of the UK’s sea borders is no solution to concerns about uncontrolled inward migration. Even so, another technological solution is being proposed: the BritCard. A digital ID card “issued free of charge to all those with the right to live and work in the UK” the BritCard “could be instantly checked by employers or landlords using a free verifier app”.

This would certainly make life harder for people overstaying their visas or failed asylum claims, as well as those who have slipped into the country undetected (probably not on a small boat). Unable to get legitimate jobs or rented accommodation, they would be forced into the “informal economy” and find it difficult to make the better life that drew them to the UK.

But what about the rest of us? The BritCard would be mandatory, universal, and “become a familiar feature of daily life for everyone in the country,” or so its designers hope. They seem undeterred by the 40% of people they polled who worry that “the technology could be misused by the government down the line”. A reasonable fear, given that the card would be integrated into the Government’s digital systems, enabling cross-checking with HMRC, the National Landlord Database, and in future benefit claims and the NHS.

Financially, the cost is estimated at £140-400 million, which is a bargain compared to the billions spent on surveillance systems for the UK’s sea borders. Socially, however, the price of tracking individuals when they attempt to work, rent a home, or interact with state services, would be a universal identity card (albeit one carried on a smartphone) that everyone would be expected to produce in more and more situations.

Governments today are increasingly keen to turn to technology to solve big social and political problems, and a lot less keen to consider what new social and political problems the high-tech solutions may cause.

All the surveillance technology and intelligence-gathering on small boat crossings have reduced neither the arrivals nor the tragic deaths. Turning instead to technological surveillance of everyone already in the country, regardless of immigration status, is no more likely to resolve a complex problem that the UK shares with most advanced economies. It would, however, move us a step closer to being, if not a “papers please”, a “QR Code please” society.

Life in Calais is an endless cycle of displacement, followed by disappointment. I arrived here in July 2016. I didn’t have much choice: back in Afghanistan, the insurgent Taliban had put out a warrant for my capture, incensed that I had supported the US military. So I left my family and friends. I fled.

Shortly before I arrived, the notorious ‘Jungle’ had been evacuated following clashes with riot police: thousands of displaced migrants were displaced once again. They have been trying to find shelter in several places in and around the city ever since.

Often they seek refuge in abandoned barracks or wooded areas, finding shelter in makeshift tents covered with tarpaulins. There isn’t much point in building anything sturdier, since the police launch eviction raids every 48 hours. The camps aren’t hard to find: they constantly smell of burning wood, mixed with the odour of waste that the local authorities refuse to collect. When the evictions take place, people do not always have time to collect their personal belongings, leaving the ground littered with blankets, wet clothes, and children’s toys.

Following several large-scale evictions in the past year, the authorities have destroyed the bushes and forests where the displaced were sheltering. Huddled people have been replaced by fences, concrete walls, and surveillance cameras that carry a simple message: you must not return. Much of Calais is like a war zone, with people surviving under the fear of the police, the evictions, and the violence that can arise between the different communities. It is difficult to access food, water, and medical services. And then winter sets in; every day, rain and wind flood and destroy makeshift shelters and lives.

Most of the people waiting here have fled countries scarred by war. Among the 1,500 people here are Afghans, Sudanese, Iranians, Eritreans, and Kuwaitis. Most of them are single men, but there are also families with children and single women. All of them see at the 30km expanse that separates Calais from England as a source of hope.

They all have different reasons for wanting to get across. Some have family waiting over there; some are left with little choice by the Dublin Regulation system, which could send them back the way they came. Given that the UK is no longer bound by the regulation, the beaches of Kent seem an enticing prospect.

For those wary of crossing in the winter months, there are some accommodation options in Calais — the Centres d’Accueil et d’Examen des Situations (CAES) are partly financed by the British authorities. But they are not particularly suitable for those people who only intend to pass through. They are in towns far from Calais without public transport — not ideal if you want to try a boat-crossing and need to be available immediately if the weather is good.

When I arrived in Calais, I didn’t know where I wanted to go: perhaps to the UK, or even Germany. The decision was made for me. Within a few months, I met an Afghan friend in exile who invited me to stay with him in his flat in Toulouse, while a friend of a friend helped me negotiate the asylum process and secure accommodation in Paris. Within two years, I had refugee status, and frequently returned to Calais to document the migrant crisis with my camera.

Every visit is more difficult; every story is more haunting. Since September last year, the prefecture has issued more than a dozen decrees to prevent organisations not mandated by the state from distributing water and food in the Calais town centre. When, last October, a hundred volunteers tried to prevent an eviction from a camp in Calais in a peaceful manner, the police responded with tear gas.

But it’s not just the police who have created this tragedy. The main funder of the aid providers in Calais, Choose Love, has actually hindered their work in recent months. In May, it forbade the NGOs it funds from distributing leaflets that provide basic “safety at sea” lifesaving information. Organisations were told they had to sign a “Memorandum of Understanding” promising not to “carry out activities which risk breaching [UK immigration] law” — or risk having their funding pulled. Last month, Choose Love announced its withdrawal from Northern France, presumably under pressure from the Home Office.

Choose love, they say, as long as you’re not in Calais.

The tragedy continues to unfurl in Calais. Without support from the French Government or British NGOs, the situation has become increasingly desperate. Although the Franco-British border has always been deadly — at least 336 deaths since 1999 — the last few months have been particularly grim. On 24 November, 27 displaced people, including children, drowned while trying to cross the Channel.

The week before, I had met several shipwrecked victims in Grande-Synthe, a town about 20km from Calais. Kazhall Ahmad was from Iraqi Kurdistan and was alone with her three children. She was exhausted; the police had evicted their camp that morning without allowing them to collect their belongings, and she had spent the past month desperately searching for water for her children. Despite their grim situation, the children were hopeful for their lives in England, dreaming of becoming barbers or art teachers. Whether they get there is a different question.

The shocking drowning in November of so many — the worst the Channel has seen since records began in 2014 — turned the spotlight back on Calais. It was the first time I had seen so many journalists in the area. The displaced people I spoke to took heart from this, hopeful that the media attention and the shock it has caused among politicians could make things better.

But if the past years have taught me anything, it’s that when it comes to meaningful action, don’t hold your breath. Over the past month, both French and British politicians have talked up the existence of legal routes and opportunities for visas. But this is nothing more than a distraction. Freedom of movement is a right for Western white people, not for those who are displaced like me.

On both sides of the Channel, governments accuse smugglers of being entirely to blame for the deaths of innocent people. In truth, it’s mostly the lack of legal and safe access routes to the United Kingdom that contributes to the development of these smuggling networks. The smugglers are a key part of the problem: they use people’s distress to make money; they put people in danger by overloading the boats; they lie to people about the crossing being safe; and when migrants refuse to take the boat, they are threatened and abused.

Such facts are inconvenient, though. It’s far easier for the French government to invest thousands upon thousands of euros strengthening border control systems and deploying a Frontex aircraft over the Channel. This militarisation of the border serves no purpose. It will not deter people from trying to cross. They have no other choice; they will continue to pass, but in a more dangerous and clandestine way.

And the smugglers will win, those who are displaced will lose, and the political class will look the other way.