When it’s time for breakfast in Dunkirk, a human trafficker in a black top openly leads a large group of migrants along a street where French people are buying baguettes.
He leads his crowd to a nearby bus station with the assurance of an official tour guide.
Around 70 Iraqis and Iranians, some of whom are carrying little children on their shoulders, join him on board and travel for an hour by car to the shore, where a black rubber boat is waiting to transport them illegitimately to England.
Even though several gendarmes were on patrol to intercept this newest addition to the flood of illegal migrants across the Channel from France, this was the sight on Wednesday morning at the French port.
The migrant issue on the northern French shore is now out of control, as shown by what we saw. The number of migrants arriving in Britain has surpassed 31,000 this year, and historic Dunkirk, the site of a famous evacuation of more than 300,000 British and French soldiers during the war, is under the control of traffickers who operate their multi-million pound people trade without restriction and with no regard for the law.
Over the course of four hours that day, we observed the trafficker and his paying clients. We first saw the group moving quickly down a route heading from the refugees’ makeshift camp outside of Dunkirk.
At a mall on the outskirts of the town, we observed them make their way to the bus stop. At 9.40 am, they boarded the C2 bus and travelled the four kilometres to Fort des Dunes in the adjacent beach town of Leffrinckoucke. They waited there for a little while.
The French citizens wanting to board at Dunkirk and at points along the way had to wait for the next bus to arrive since the vehicle was so packed with migrants that all seats and standing area were occupied.
The bus driver, a young Frenchman with a hipster beard, answered me directly when I asked whether he believed his passengers to be migrants: “Clandestins allant en Angleterre” (Illegals travelling to England).
He rolled his eyes weary and advised me to wait for the next bus on the same route 15 minutes later, when there would be less people, rather than getting on.
After following the trafficker’s C2 bus out of Dunkirk, we saw them disembark an hour later at Fort des Dunes. The street is named Rue de 2 Juin 1940 to honour the French soldiers who lost their lives in Leffrinckoucke during the Dunkirk evacuation.
The trafficker continued to lead the migrants as they exited the automobile, gently guiding them across the street at a zebra crossing.
They marched toward a little footbridge that over a railroad track that runs between cities and descended into a Leffrinckoucke housing development.
The refugees hurried by terrace homes with French titles including one honouring author Emile Zola as the trafficker remained in front.
After travelling for around 30 minutes, they arrived at the wooden gate of Dune Dewulf, a popular destination for local dog walkers and hikers.
Numerous paths take you through the park to the town’s mile-long beach, where you can view the Dover white cliffs on a clear day.
We last saw the trafficker in his black top as the party passed through the gate.
Three hours later, the migrants left the park, however, sprinting to the blow-up boat they knew would be there since people-smuggling groups had marked the spot on their cell phones.
At least 50 of the migrants were on board the boat by 1.40 p.m. wearing red life jackets as they sailed for England past French sailing vessels and windsurfers. No French navy rescue boats halted them on their approach, according to maritime monitoring stations monitored that day by the Mail.
On one of the 15 boats that transported 667 migrants into the UK from the beaches of northern France on Wednesday, this group is thought to have arrived on England’s South Coast.
It would be concerning enough if the travel we monitored was an isolated incident. But later that day, the Mail saw another group of 40 migrant clients travelling by bus from Dunkirk to Fort des Dunes, likewise guided by their smuggling leader.
This party dispersed after getting off the bus at the last stop, a terminus adjacent to the beach, and strolling past people enjoying ice cream into woodlands with tall dunes overlooking the sea.
It is a haven for traffickers. There are several brick fortifications scattered around it that were constructed in the 19th century to defend France against invasion but now bore the wounds of the 1940 evacuation. These defences are increasingly employed to conceal immigrants. They provide ideal lookout points high above the beach from which traffickers may watch for police in four-wheel-drive vehicles scouting the shoreline to prevent the launches.
Olivier Ryckebusch, the mayor of Leffrinckoucke, said last year that the influx of refugees waiting to enter into the UK had overwhelmed his town. Before requesting emergency money from President Macron to clean up the devastation the undocumented visitors left behind in the forests and on the beach, he stated, “We feel powerless.”
The packing of boats, life jackets, and their used fuel cans are among the transport equipment waste that can be seen on the ground (for making fires). Families wait to board the ship to England here on the beach. After that, we must gather the trash and find a way to get rid of it in our community.
Leffrinckoucke, however, is not alone. On Thursday at seven in the morning, we discovered that the traffickers had modified their strategy.
On the opposite side of Dunkirk, at Grand Fort Philippe, they had relocated their launch operations throughout the course of the night.
We arrived early and saw migrant groups racing from the neighbouring forests and sand dunes onto the beach where they frantically attempted to inflate boats.
The French police arrived first this time. They rushed quickly to pierce the inflatable boats, making them incapable of sailing. As their intended passengers made pitiful attempts to drag what was left behind—the outboard engines and metal strut supports in the bases of the boats—back into the dunes, the rubber corpses were left lying on the sand.
For the forces of law and order, it was a sort of victory. But the traffickers, who have been present on this coast for 20 years, are not to be taken lightly; according to a senior gendarme in Dunkirk, they have planned “a military operation on land and water in painstaking detail.” The “show” is being managed by them.
Undoubtedly, it is a cat and mouse game. And just now, only the mouse is triumphant. Because the trafficker tour guide would be very wealthy today if every immigrant on the 9.40am bus from Dunkirk had paid the prevailing fee of at least £2,000 for their trip to Britain.