Migrants landing on British beaches ‘completely undetected’

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The comments come as a Cabinet minister said not every migrant boat can be intercepted, the day after 21 people were detained when a boat evaded Border Force to reach the beach of Samphire Hoe in Dover, following five being held when a dinghy made it to shore at Folkestone on Monday.

The ISU union, which represents Border Force officers, claimed more so-called uncontrolled landings were taking place than the public are aware of and the Home Office was able to record because some boats are landing on beaches completely undetected.

And although not thought to be frequent, there is no way to judge the scale of the problem, it said.

Meanwhile, a former Border Force boss said the whole of the south coast should now be monitored for migrant crossings, not just the narrowest section of the Channel – the Dover Strait – to intercept beach landings.

Read more: Man jailed for two years after throwing plastic bottle and swearing at police during Portsmouth anti-migrant protest

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Asked if boats were arriving completely undetected, ISU spokeswoman Lucy Moreton said: “It’s absolutely, definitely happening.”

Describing them as “known unknowns”, she said: “If no-one sees them, no-one sees them.

“But we know that we’ve had abandoned vessels, we’ve had reports of uncontrolled landings all the way down to Falmouth.”

Ms Moreton accused the Home Office of taking the position that “if we don’t look for it, we don’t know it’s happening. We don’t know it’s happening, we don’t have to deal with it”.

She said monitoring of the Channel was “very good” between Calais and Dover but it was harder to identify and detect boats which set sail further west along the French coast and this means they may be spotted much later, if at all.

Currents can then push boats towards Kent or Hampshire and Cornwall depending on the weather and how much power the motor has.

“There has always been an understanding that this was probably happening,” Ms Moreton said.

She said more boats were taking this course because “we’ve made it more difficult for them” in a controlled area of northern France.

“Ultimately, we do not know how many are not identified, or how many are lost at sea, because we just don’t have that monitoring that we do from the beaches around the Calais area,” Ms Moreton said.

While some reports from members of the public or abandoned dinghies and personal belongings found on beaches could be accounted for by “holidaymakers playing with a boat”, some of those are “likely statistically to be an uncontrolled landing we haven’t detected”, she said.

According to the Home Office, no Channel crossings without an escort had been officially recorded since September 6 2025.

Uncontrolled landings are so rare that last year’s incident was the only other one logged by the department since Government records began in 2023.

Asked if Border Force staff suspect there have been more beach landings within the last year which were completely undetected, Ms Moreton said: “Absolutely, yes.”

She said there was “no way to judge the scale of the problem” but it was probably involving small groups of around 20 migrants and it was not likely to be happening frequently.

“But does it happen? Yes, it definitely does happen,” Ms Moreton said.

She described uncontrolled landings as a “significant threat” for staff, the public and migrants, particularly in light of erupting protests.

Migrants are “soaked”, burned from fuel oil, starving, unwell and freezing when they arrive on beaches and are often found carrying knives or weapons for their own defence – or so they can threaten to slash boats if they do not want to be picked up at sea, Ms Moreton said.

This is an “incredible strain” on Border Force officers who are not trained in mass public order incidents, she said.

Just saying “stop it in France – that’s not going to work, it’s going to keep happening”, Ms Moreton warned, adding that, while still being a “risk”, the best way was for migrant boats to be intercepted at sea and taken to a reception centre.

Officials are now looking for sites in Hampshire which could house another reception centre like Border Force’s Western Jetfoil facility in Dover to receive and process migrants once they arrive in the UK after being intercepted at sea in a bid to make it easier and quicker to bring them ashore, she said.

Former Border Force director general Tony Smith said beach landings were a “big worry”.

He said: “We’ve got technology – radar and drones and surveillance – but clearly, it didn’t work on this particular occasion.

“All I can assume is that somehow the systems that we have got in place to detect each landing has failed for some reason or other.

“It’s possible that the smaller vessel evaded the radar altogether.”

Mr Smith questioned why migrants would choose to arrive on a beach rather than be rescued and processed and said “there must be a reason why they did not want to be caught”.

He suggested they may have wanted to “evade capture altogether” and avoid biometric checks which could flag a criminal record or had already crossed the Channel before.

It was “very unlikely” the boats had unwittingly drifted to the beaches undetected, Mr Smith added.

Asked what can be done to tackle beach landings, he said if he was advising ministers his preferred option would be to review resources and cover the whole of the south coast for migrant crossings and not just the Dover Strait – the narrowest part of the Channel measuring around 20 miles across at its shortest distance.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said the uncontrolled landings were “not acceptable” and insisted they were “incredibly rare”.

She said: “But even one is one too many.

“That is why I have ordered an urgent review by the Border Security Command into how this happened, and what must be done to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”