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The Home Office is considering allowing the use of nets to prevent migrants from crossing the Canal in small boats into the UK to seek asylum, according to a former Royal Marine tasked with preventing travel.
In an interview with the Daily Telegraph, the Home Office’s underground channel’s threat commander Dan O’Mahoney said the nets could be used to clog propellers and stop boats as they try to cross the Strait of Dover.
O’Mahoney told the Telegraph: “It’s that kind of thing, yeah. So safely disable the engine and then bring the migrants aboard our boat. “
The tactic is the latest tactic ministers and officials are considering, in addition to locking migrants in oil rigs, sending them more than 5,000 miles away to Ascension Island in the South Atlantic, and using water cannons to create waves to make waves. back the boats.
While the number of people arriving in the UK in small boats has almost quadrupled this year to more than 7,000, the total number of asylum applications received by the UK government between April and June fell almost to 100%. half compared to the first three months of the year the Covid-19 pandemic struck.
O’Mahoney told the Telegraph that networking is one of several methods “that we can implement in the coming months. But since we are not using them yet, I am not at liberty to go into details about them … We are working with the maritime security departments of law enforcement and the military, everywhere in the government. [to] devise new tactics to tackle this problem ”.
He added: “We are definitely very, very close to being able to implement a safe return tactic in which we do a safe intervention on a migrant boat, we take the migrants aboard our boat and then we take them back to France.” .
O’Mahoney used the interview to reveal a four-stage plan to tackle the problem of undocumented migration: using social media to try to stop the flow of migrants from Africa and the Middle East to northern France, reducing the number of applicants. of asylum leaving the country. region for the UK, physically preventing entry to the UK and reforming the British asylum system.
The final thread was addressed by Interior Secretary Priti Patel in her speech at the Conservative party virtual conference last week. He called the asylum system “fundamentally broken” and promised new laws to deny asylum to those who use unofficial routes to enter the UK.
Speaking at the Conservative Party conference, the Home Secretary said she would introduce legislation next year to stop “endless legal lawsuits” from rejected asylum seekers and was willing to face “being unpopular on Twitter” to reduce the number of applications.
