Many Britons find it unsettling to witness a group of foreign men arriving on Kent’s pebble beaches without any background information about them – where they come from or why they are here.
It has been emphasized for a long time that the Channel sea border between Britain and France, located just six miles out to sea, has become so ineffective that it holds little significance beyond being a mere line on a map.
The importance of having a secure border has been stressed, as a nation without one is essentially just open land that can be accessed by anyone in the world, thus compromising its sovereignty.
Now we are told by The Mail on Sunday that a Palestinian fighter with a dubious past arrived on a Channel boat last Thursday.
Until he was found on Sunday night, there were fears that gun-toting Abu Wadee, a Palestinian migrant who has called for the slaughter of all Jews and is a former Gaza militia member with links to a terror group, had melted away.
It wouldn’t have surprised me. I have stood on the beach at Dungeness when overcrowded boats boats have come in, shadowed by Border Force vessels or RNLI lifeboats.
I have watched as the occupants have made victory signs or fallen to their knees to kiss the ground.
In the case of Wadee – described this weekend as a ‘dangerous anti-Semite’ by Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp – he posted a video after reaching our shores with the words: ‘Thank God, we arrived in Britain.
There were fears that gun-toting Abu Wadee (pictured), a Palestinian migrant who has called for the slaughter of all Jewsand is a former Gaza militia member
The migrant has filmed himself chanting about killing Jews
Wadee’s social media is replete with pictures of him posing with a Kalashnikov, an artillery shell and a menacing posse of masked men
’He is one of 25,000 migrants the Labour Government has let in by sea since it gained power last July.
More than 1,700 arrived last week alone, enough to fill a very large secondary school.
By now, they will be living in hotels and Home Office flats after a feeble screening process, the details of which I have learnt from numerous migrants I have interviewed.
Fresh off the boats, they go to a temporary holding facility at Dover port where immigration officers give each of them a personal number which is written on a band on their wrist.
There is no attempt, nor enough time, to take down their names or check the arrivals’ true origins at this stage.
Many have already destroyed their identity documents in France or thrown them overboard in the Channel so they can concoct any backstory they want.
They are patted down for weapons or knives (and plenty of the latter have been found, although some are discarded in the boats).
Then, off they go by bus – sometimes within hours – to the huge Manston processing centre 20 miles along the Kent coast where, for the first time, they are asked to state their name and nationality and are fingerprinted.
This process can be fraught with confusion. For a start, although there are translators (some on video link) they can be overwhelmed by the numbers and the variety of languages and dialects.
As for fingerprinting, this is worthwhile only if the prints of the migrant have been taken when entering Europe or travelling through it towards Calais or Dunkirk so that the results can be cross-referenced.
Migrants wave to a smuggler’s boat in an attempt to cross the English Channel, on the beach of Gravelines, near Dunkirk, northern France on April 26, 2024
Migrants in an overcrowded dinghy off the coast of Gravelines in France on January 17
The wiliest travel clandestinely avoid giving their prints. Many deliberately scar their fingertips using cigarette lighters or by cutting them with knives so prints are useless.
Despite this gaping security flaw, most don’t stay at Manston for long before being put on another bus and sent to one of the migrants’ hotels or Home Office shared flats where they are free to walk out at any time.
If they are lying about their true identity or nationality, it is often only by chance that the deception is discovered.
Last year, for instance, I spoke to an Iranian migrant in his early 40s who was put in an east London hotel after coming in on a boat.
As he entered the lobby late at night, he was told by Home Office officials that he would be sharing a room with a fellow countryman.
The Iranian called Ali told me: ‘I walked in and found that the man was from Iraq, spoke only Arabic not Persian, and was pretending to be from my capital Tehran which he thought would improve his asylum chances’.
In another case, I exposed a 23-year-old Afghan child murderer who arrived here by boat from Calais in 2021 after fleeing Austria.
Police there had launched a manhunt for him after a local girl of 13 was found dead, wrapped in an Arabic blanket.
She had been enticed to his flat before being drugged and raped, then stabbed to death.
The killer, Rasuili Zubaidullah, hoodwinked border staff in Kent with a false name on his arrival, went through the ‘checking process’ at Manston, and was sent to the Ibis Hotel in Whitechapel, east London, as an asylum seeker.
A group of people thought to be migrants are brought in to Dover, Kent, from a Border Force vessel following a small boat incident in the Channel in December 2024
It was only after the Austrians tipped off our immigration police that he was caught, then deported and convicted of murder.
But how did this evil child killer get through, initially? Why did he set his sights on this country after fleeing Austria?
And how many other girls might he have attacked if he had stayed in a hotel for longer at our expense and with idle hands?
The Labour Government has promised to smash the gangs that send over boats. Yet the pledge could not sound hollower.
Nearly every EU member country – from once-liberal Sweden to a tougher-minded Italy – has tightened national borders as politicians face a people’s revolt over uncontrolled immigration and its links to terror attacks and crime.
It should be easier for us to stop the flow since we have a 21-mile strip of sea between France and the south coast. Yet as the arrival of Jew-hating Wadee shows, we appear to have given up.
