In an effort to assure their survival, desperate moms trying to cross the English Channel in dinghies are flinging their infants over the water to rescue workers.
The Royal National Lifeboat Institution’s Simon Ling said on Wednesday that volunteer crew members encounter “chaotic” and “distressing” situations every single day at sea.
The information was revealed when a horrifying video of an Afghan girl, 14, who was being rescued drifted in and out of consciousness was made public.
An RNLI member can be heard shouting, “This is serious, one person is not breathing,” on the helmet video.
It is now known that about 37,000 individuals have put their lives in danger so far this year, including 502 on Tuesday.
More video from the same event shows a lady making her way to the rescuers while carrying a little infant over her head.
Mostly made up of volunteers, Mr. Ling’s crew, according to him, “frequently sees women and children huddling in the center of the boats, men sitting on the side.”
The degree of anguish is so great that women are holding up their kids and, in some instances, hurling them at our lifeboat crew to capture. It is quite chaotic.
When their pagers sound, volunteers leave their own families behind to run to the help of others because they “understand the possible human cost,” according to Mr. Ling.
“We are used to seeing increases in activity around our coast during the summer, partly as a result of new trends in water use, but seeing year-round increases in launches and the potential impact these types of rescues have on our crew’s emotional well-being is not something the RNLI has previously been faced with.”
Last year, Nigel Farage made the contentious assertion that the RNLI operated a “taxi service for migrants,” adding that it was “to the dismay of those concerned.”
The RNLI justified their assistance to the Border Force, calling it “humanitarian work of the greatest kind.”
“The people of these islands (the UK) are basically nice people, and all decent people will recognize this as humanitarian effort of the greatest kind,” Chief Executive Mark Dowie said.
“Some of the abuse our workers endured should not have been tolerated,” the statement reads.
The organization was allegedly then forced to postpone additional rescue efforts due to the volume of people it was currently rescuing in the English Channel.
According to authorities, 502 persons crossed the street on Tuesday in 12 different instances.
According to official government numbers, the most recent arrivals bring the total number of small boats detained in the English Channel this year to 36,965 in 911 vessels, up from 28,526 in 2021.
3,964 individuals have been apprehended in 87 boats throughout the month of October alone.
11 Albanians were flown home last week aboard a charter jet as part of a pilot program, according to the Home Office.
The migrants were transferred to Manston, Kent, a former RAF airport that is being used to handle Channel migrants, after they arrived from northern France earlier this month.
They reportedly declined to ask for asylum and were therefore informed by immigration agents that they would be deported right away.
The development comes seven weeks after former home secretary Priti Patel struck a historic agreement with her Albanian colleague for a “quick removal” program, which might represent a significant advancement in resolving the Channel dilemma.
Although the project has not yet been approved in its entirety, it is thought that closer collaboration with the Tirana administration contributed to the expulsion of the 11 Albanians.
At the start of the summer, a large influx of Albanians began to cross the Channel. Currently, they account for 60% of immigrants from northern France.
‘We encourage anybody who is considering leaving a secure nation and risking their life at the hands of people smugglers to quickly rethink,’ a Home Office spokeswoman said. They won’t be let to begin a new life here, despite the falsehoods they were told.