More than 8,000 migrants have arrived in the UK after crossing the English Channel this year, figures show.
Over 600 migrants arrived in the UK by small boat this weekend, 167 in 13 boats on Saturday and 436 in nine boats on Sunday.
Since the start of 2022, 8,393 people have reached the UK after navigating busy shipping lanes from France in small boats, according to analysis of government data by the PA news agency.
This is more than double the number recorded for the same period in 2021 (3,112) and more than six times the amount recorded at this point in 2020 (1,340).
Poor weather conditions last week meant there were four consecutive days last week without any crossings taking place.
Reform UK leader Richard Tice uploaded a video to his Twitter of dozens of migrants being escorted along a beach.
The 30 second clip shows the group of what appears to be mainly men, some of whom briefly stop to pray, arriving in the UK yesterday.
Mr Tice said: ‘WATCH: NO RWANDA DETERRENT, as many hundreds arriving today on South Coast. Smugglers are laughing at us.’
Migrants who arrive on British shores face the threat of being deported the Rwanda, in Africa.
Under a partnership agreement with the Rwandan government, people arriving in the UK, including by crossing the Channel in small boats, will be flown 4,000 miles to East Africa if they are deemed to have travelled illegally for economic reasons rather than asylum.
The number of migrants who have arrived on UK shores this year has passed 8,000 (pictured: migrants arriving in Dover yesterday)
The number of migrants who have come to the UK on small boats is significantly higher than what it was at this point last year
A video shows hundreds of migrants being escorted along a beach after just arriving
Hundreds of migrants over the weekend including young children and mothers make the journey across the Channel
A record 28,395 migrants reached the UK illegally last year in small boats over the Channel, a 200 per cent increase on 2020
Fifty migrants have already been told they will be the first to be sent to Rwanda in east Africa as part of the government’s controversial resettlement policy
There have been nine days of crossings so far in May, with 1,700 people arriving in the UK as a result.
The highest daily total for 2022 to date was recorded on April 13 when 651 people made the crossing in 18 boats.
A record 1,185 people made the crossing to the UK on November 11 2021 – the highest recorded since the start of 2020.
A total of 28,526 people made the crossing in 2021, compared with 8,466 in 2020, 1,843 in 2019 and 299 in 2018, official Home Office figures show.
The latest crossings come after the department said it had started to tell the first asylum seekers they could be flown to Rwanda under its new deportation plan, with flights expected to begin in ‘the coming months’.
Nearly the same amount of migrants who crossed the channel in the whole of 2020 have made the crossing in less than half of 2022
In an interview with the Daily Mail this weekend, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said 50 migrants have already been told they are due to be flown to the east African nation within a fortnight but he anticipated legal opposition to the move.
Last week Tom Pursglove, one of the Government’s immigration ministers, told MPs on the Commons Home Affairs Committee that the scheme was a ‘new and untested policy’ and could not point to what modelling was used to give the ‘evidence base’ to implement it.
Despite the increasing numbers, the UK’s small boat arrivals are a fraction of the number of people arriving in Europe.
Data from the UN’s refugee agency shows at least 120,441 people arrived in Europe via the Mediterranean by land and sea in 2021.