AMID the abject squalor of the New Jungle migrant camp, the whispered talk is of a “waiting list” for a berth on a dinghy.
One Afghan, 24, told me: “Some people have been waiting for three weeks. The smugglers told me to be patient.”
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Now — with Paris bristling with cops for the Olympics — the deadly cross-Channel trade in human cargo 190 miles north may get an untimely boost.
A former Border Force boss fears that extra officers drafted to the French capital will leave a “golden opportunity” for smuggling masterminds around Calais and Dunkirk.
Ex-chief immigration officer Kevin Saunders, 70, told The Sun: “I think we’re going to have a problem for the period of the Olympic Games, especially if the weather is nice.”
Kevin, who worked in Calais for 15 years, added: “The smugglers know what they are doing.
“These guys were drug dealers who went into people-smuggling because the returns are just as good. And if you get caught, the sentencing isn’t as severe as it is for drug offences.”
EU border agency Frontex has sent dozens of officers to help out on the Channel coast for the first time.
Personnel deployed include 22 around the port of Calais, 21 at the Channel Tunnel and ten in Dunkirk.
All are uniformed, carry service weapons and have a range of legal powers including stop and search.
Grim perils
It appears French officers could do with the extra hands.
Last week 1,499 migrants made the journey in 27 boats including some in a seemingly stolen 18ft yacht.
As of Sunday, 15,831 have crossed by small boat this year — nine per cent higher than this time 12 months ago and up three per cent on the same period in 2022.
Highlighting the grim perils of the cross-Channel trade, two people died last week amid rescue operations off the northern French coast.
Staggeringly, this year alone more than 20 have perished trying to cross the busy shipping lanes from the world’s seventh biggest economy — France — to Britain, its sixth.
The chaos in the Channel has been at or near the top of the new Prime Minister’s in-tray.
Sir Keir Starmer said: “We’ve inherited a really bad problem from the government. We’ve got record numbers this year, and we can’t switch that in 24 hours, in one week.”
Labour has pledged to combat the trade by using an “elite” new Border Security Command, with counter- terror powers, to take on the ruthless smuggling gangs.
Meanwhile the so-called New Jungle, set in scrub and wasteland at Loon-Plage near Dunkirk, is brimming with migrants eager to secure a place on a rickety dinghy.
Hundreds queue for food handouts while bargaining by phone with smugglers for a place on a dinghy.
Migrants told me the going rate is around £1,350.
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Kids’ toys and tricycles lie strewn among the ramshackle tents, rotting detritus and open-air latrines.
Among the mostly young men are several dozen women and their toddlers.
They include Josephine Johnkong, 23, and her children Wang, three, and Nyayang, two, who are there with her husband Nairobi, 24.
The family — along with Nairobi’s 36-year-old brother Laat — fled their native South Sudan in east Africa which has been racked with famine, hunger and violence.
Taking the risk
Nairobi — named after the Kenyan capital where he was born — told me: “We left my country because of war. It took us one year on the road.”
He has heard all about the dangers of the Channel waves and currents.
“If you’re in a bad situation you take the risk,” he added.
Others readily agree.
Fellow South Sudanese native Piol Yakyak, 19, said of putting himself in the smugglers’ hands: “We know it’s dangerous.
“There’s no other solution. If you’re lucky, you will get to Britain. If you’re not lucky you’ll be dead.”
A former Kabul shopkeeper — with his four children aged three to ten playing in the dust around him — insisted: “I know people die taking the boats but in Afghanistan death is normal for us.”
Gesturing at the shabby tents and open-air toilets of the Jungle, the 32-year-old said: “We’re living like animals. I will take the risk of a dinghy to Britain. My daughter can’t go to school in Afghanistan, she can in your country.”
Jungle residents include Iraqis, Eritreans, Vietnamese and Iranians.
Among a five-strong contingent of Sri Lankans is house painter Senthuran, 34, who sold his land to make the £20,000 journey to the UK.
His smuggler promised unmarried Senthuran an apartment on the French coast before making his attempt at crossing the Channel.
Instead he’s sleeping in bushes and washing at a stand pipe.
He says he’s escaping discrimination in his homeland as a member of the Tamil minority there.
“I want to work in the UK,” he insisted. “I’ll do any job.”
Some here are more deserving cases than others.
I met two migrants who admitted they had already had asylum claims denied in Germany and Belgium respectively and were now trying their luck in Britain.
While one Afghani confessed he had served a prison sentence in Britain before being deported.
On Tuesday French police raided the Jungle, clearing tents as the migrants fled.
One cop told me: “We arrested people smugglers.”
Yet, taking out traffickers is described as “Whac-A-Mole” with other criminals appearing near-instantly to take up the slack.
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Dinghies are launched from an almost 200-mile sweep of French coastline stretching from the Belgian border towards the River Somme.
The territory that needs to be patrolled includes a swathe miles inland.
Migrants are now sailing down rivers and canals to reach the sea.
A seven-year-old Iraqi girl died this year after falling from a boat 20 miles upstream from the coast.
Game of cat and mouse
Ex-Border Force man Kevin Saunders explained: “They think it’s quicker to get the migrants on to the boats (in the rivers) and offers less chance for the French authorities to stop them.”
When French authorities laid barrages in the rivers to stop the boats, smugglers simply cut through their holding chains.
The game of cat and mouse on French soil can help decide who wins power in British politics.
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The Tories’ headline pledge to Stop The Boats proved an election-losing slogan.
Their Rwanda scheme to fly migrants to East Africa never got off the ground.
It cost taxpayers £700million and sent just four volunteers there.
Staggeringly, since 2014 Britain has also allocated more than £700million to France to prevent irregular migration.
Yet, the tentacles of the Kurdish smuggling gangs still have the New Jungle very much in their grip.
So will Labour’s plan to go after the smugglers with beefed-up policing and intelligence be effective?
Ex-Border Force man Kevin Saunders says it will only work if countries such as people-smuggling hub Turkey fully cooperate.
“British police officers have no powers overseas,” he said.
“So if they want to do anything in another country, then it has to be done in conjunction with the local police force.”
Labour’s new MP for Dover, Mike Tapp, is supremely qualified to talk about the challenges of smashing the people-smuggling networks.
After serving with the Intelligence Corp on tours of Afghanistan and Iraq, he fought organised crime with the National Crime Agency before working in counter-terrorism for the Ministry of Defence.
The MP believes that harnessing proposed new counter-terror style powers and the snooping talents of MI5 in the fight against the smugglers will be a game-changer.
“The gangs will keep operating while it’s a viable route,” he said.
“So the only way of getting on top of that is by making it unviable — and that’s by taking out the gangs.”
Of the potential surge in small boats during the Olympics, he added: “Hopefully, the French will continue to put assets on their borders to prevent that.”
Time will tell whether Labour’s enforcement plans prove productive.
But if the number of small boat arrivals do not fall in the next months and years, they may prove Labour’s electoral undoing — just as they were for the Tories.
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