Call it £225,000,000 for cash. That’s how much I reckon Border Force owes us in fines for ferrying illegal immigrants across the Channel.
Wondering where this information comes from? Let’s look at the story of the Essex couple who were fined £1,500. They discovered a migrant hidden under the cover of a bike rack at the back of their motorhome.
After returning from France to Heybridge, Adrian and Joanne Fenton noticed something unusual. While Adrian was unpacking their bikes, he noticed a pair of sneakers peeking out from under the cover.
Joanne explained: ‘He thinks to himself “I haven’t left any trainers on here” and then he sees there are two legs attached to it.’
Adrian, who is a retired firefighter, unzipped the cover and found the stowaway. The individual claimed to be a 16-year-old from Sudan, a common tactic as unaccompanied minors receive special treatment and support.
(If he’s 16, I’m 21 again. And we only have his word that he’s from Sudan. He could be from anywhere.)
Joanne rang the police, who took the man into custody. Presumably, he’s shacked up in a four-star hotel somewhere. Maybe he’s living with foster parents. He might even have started school and is getting ready to take his GCSEs.
And that, the Fentons assumed, was the end of the matter. This was, after all, back in October last year. Two months later they received a letter from the Home Office issuing them with a £1,500 fine for failing to ‘check that no clandestine entrant was concealed’ in their motorhome.
Adrian and Joanne Fenton (pictured) were astonished to find a Sudanese man inside a bike bag on their motorhome
They noticed the man when they spotted a pair of trainers sticking out from under the cover
He wasn’t in the motorhome, he was clinging to the outside, hiding under a bike cover. The Fentons vehicle had passed through immigration and customs controls in both France and back in Britain, but border officials hadn’t spotted him either.
They had no idea when he’d stowed away. As Joanne said: ‘In France, these clandestines are everywhere.’ It’s unreasonable to expect holidaymakers to search their vehicles inside and out every time they stop for a coffee or to use the loo.
It’s not as if the Fentons are running a smuggling operation, on a par with the Albanian mob. And they notified the police immediately. They’re the innocent victims here, but that cuts no ice with the Home Office, which said the fine was ‘designed to target negligence rather than criminality’.
Meanwhile, the migrant who entered the country illegally faces no such sanction. Instead, he immediately gets access to free accommodation, legal advice, medical treatment and the full panoply of benefits Britain has to offer illegal ‘entrants’, as we must apparently now call them.
The Fentons are appealing against the fine, but this case serves to illustrate the farcical state of the Government’s approach to illegal immigration.
Far easier to fine an unsuspecting couple from Essex than to actually do anything about the flood of cross-Channel migrants from goodness knows where.
Labour scrapped the Rwanda scheme – the only, admittedly imperfect, deterrent to date – on Day One, claiming it breached European yuman rites laws. Yet this week we learned that Starmer’s beloved EU has drawn up plans to deport migrants to third countries while their asylum claims are processed.
Daily, the small boats keep on coming. More than 150,000 have crossed the Channel, with another 4,000 already this year.
He wasn’t in the motorhome, he was clinging to the outside, hiding under a bike cover
Most of them are ‘rescued’ by Border Force vessels after being escorted halfway across by the cynical French. Once they land, they are here for good, not so much ‘no questions asked’ as ‘any answer accepted’.
Last Friday, I wrote that we are even rolling out the red carpet for the ‘worst of the worst’. While I was writing that column, Border Force was escorting another few boatloads to Britain, including a pro-Hamas gunman who wants to ‘Kill All Jews’.
We only know about him because of the brilliant Mail on Sunday exposé. Once he set foot in Kent, he was free to go and made his way to Manchester before being arrested. Who is going to be held responsible for that?
If anyone is guilty of negligence, it is the very people charged with keeping our borders safe. That includes the politicians, lawyers, judges, migrant charities and Border Force – who, to be fair, are only obeying orders from their political masters.
The Fentons were fined for transporting someone who stowed away on the back on their motorhome. Yet every day, Border Force is ferrying hundreds of illegal ‘entrants’ to Britain in plain sight.
The Home Office says the Fentons’ fine of £1,500 is at the lower end of the scale. More serious offences rise to £10,000.
In which case, my initial £225 million is an underestimate. Given that 150,000 have landed here in the full knowledge of, and with the collusion of, the authorities, the total fines should be much, much higher, at ten grand a pop.
Call it £1.5 billion for cash.
