LONDON.- Nearly 1,000 migrants crossed the Channel to the United Kingdom in just two days after a three-week pause in arrivals, according to Home Office figures reported on Sunday, November 1.
Some 671 people in nine boats made the journey on Friday, a day after 263 people in three boats crossed on Thursday, breaking a 21-day hiatus — the longest spell without arrivals this year — amid high sea swell and wind. Together, the two days add up to 934 arrivals, reported as nearly 1,000. The total number of arrivals for 2026 stood at 21,869 after Friday.
Footage captured by the Press Association on Friday showed a man in waist-deep water moving toward a dinghy holding a knife, while a man aboard the boat tried to hit him with a boot, as French rescue boats hovered a short distance away. A call of "I will kill you" was heard in the footage. A separate clip from Saturday showed migrants throwing punches on a dinghy, 24 hours after the knifeman was seen threatening a small boat pilot. It remains unclear whether the man armed with a blade managed to cross to Britain.
The government says crossings are down significantly, with the lowest number of summer arrivals since 2020 recorded this year, and that, with just over two months of the year to go and crossings typically lower during late autumn and winter, the 2026 total is unlikely to surpass the 2025 figure.
The surge comes as tensions run high inside the government over Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood's immigration reforms. Mahmood wants to double the wait for permanent residency from five to ten years, with lower-paid migrants potentially made to wait 15 years, but proposals to apply the changes retrospectively face being softened amid fears of a Labour rebellion, with Housing Secretary Angela Rayner already calling the plan "un-British."
The Conservatives claimed the new figures showed Labour had "lost control of our borders." Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said: "The boats keep coming, the smugglers keep operating and Labour keeps making excuses."
Migrants have also begun using a stretch of Channel coast across Belgium and France to launch small boats to the UK, according to the reports.
Fuentes: The Scottish Sun, 1 de noviembre de 2026; Qatar Tribune, 1 de noviembre de 2026.