Channel migrants are taking significant risks with their lives by using tyre inner-tubes as makeshift life jackets, an investigation has found.
A GB News crew filmed one abandoned boat full of inner-tubes, which one source said were “absolutely no substitute for proper life-preserving equipment.”
The discovery comes as authorities confirm more than 1,300 people have crossed the English Channel in 24 small boats in the past two days.
Official figures from the Ministry of Defence reveal that 884 people crossed yesterday in 17 inflatables.
The total number of migrants who have crossed the Channel so far this year now stands at 43,448.
The number who made it to the UK in the whole of 2021 was 28,526.
The abandoned boat GB News discovered was drifting around eight miles off the coast of Dover.
Those onboard had been transferred to a Border Force vessel a short time earlier.
As the team got closer to the migrant inflatable, they saw dozens of tyre inner-tubes lying in the well of the vessel.
A source confirmed the rubber tubes were being used as makeshift life jackets.
The discovery is unusual, as people smuggling gangs have become more sophisticated in their operations of late, and now provide life jackets as standard issue on their small boats.
The source told GB News: “A year or two ago, you used to see people smugglers using rubber inner-tubes on occasions as a substitute for life preservers because the criminal gangs weren’t that sophisticated then.
“They would use inner-tubes or chunks of polystyrene.
“But in the last year in particular, the organised crime groups have well sourced supply lines, giving them access to thousands of life jackets on a regular basis.”
A Reuters camera crew also saw evidence that inner-tubes were being used on small boats, as they filmed an inflatable which French police had intercepted on a beach near Sangatte.
Inside the boat were inner-tubes and nearby a group of migrants could be seen walking away back up the beach, none wearing life jackets.
