French police have arrested two British activists allegedly seeking to prevent migrants from crossing the English Channel from the beaches of Calais.
Boulogne-sur-Mer prosecutor Cécile Gressier announced that two British men, aged 35 and 53, were arrested over the weekend over comments they made online concerning plans to prevent illegal migrants from using people smuggler-operated boats to reach England.
The pair were arrested on suspicion of “inciting hatred” and participating in a group planning violence. According to Le Figaro, the arrests are believed to be the first of their kind against British anti-mass migration activists.
The paper reported one of the suspects told his YouTube audience: “I’m going to guard the beaches tonight, if no one else wants to do it… If I see a dinghy, I’ll run and pierce it with all my might.”
The man called on his fellow countrymen to also come to Calais to help stop illegal migrant crossings of the Channel. In the video, he stressed that the actions must be carried out “without violence”.
“We can only take in so many, too many is too many, and this is too much, isn’t it? That’s why we’re doing this,” he is quoted as saying.
According to French authorities, the attempted disruption of the people smuggler trade in Calais came as part of the ‘Operation Overlord’ campaign organised by British activist Danny Tommo.
The campaign takes its name from a World War II Allied operation which saw the crossing of the English Channel and the liberation of Nazi-occupied Western Europe.
Last week, the Nord and Pas-de-Calais prefectures announced a ban on the group from gathering, and have since extended the ban through Wednesday.
Tommo claimed that the attention his group has garnered and the police presence on French beaches over the weekend to monitor the British activists resulted in a pause in prospective illegals attempting to reach Britain via the Channel.
“When pressure is applied by ordinary people, the authorities act immediately. And when they act at scale, the boats stop,” he wrote.
“It shows exactly what’s possible. If that same level of policing and pressure was applied every day to the illegal crossings, this crisis could be brought under control,” Tommo continued.
It comes after 41,472 illegal boat migrants crossed the English Channel from the beaches of France in 2025, the second-highest yearly total on record. This is despite successive British governments giving Paris hundreds of millions in funding to stem the tide of illegal migrants and to take down the people smuggling networks.
Meanwhile, the left-wing Labour Party government has rejected the notion of turning back the boats or leaving the deportation-blocking European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), both of which have been advocated for by Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party.
Follow Kurt Zindulka on X: Follow @KurtZindulka or e-mail to: [email protected]
Read the full article here