Number of migrants crossing Channel passes 10,000 in record time
Last year the figure of 10,000 was not reached until May 24, while in 2023 it was June 17.
The number of migrants who have arrived in the UK so far this year after crossing the English Channel has passed 10,000 in record time.
Some 473 migrants arrived on Monday, bringing the cumulative total for 2025 to 10,358, according to provisional figures from the Home Office.
It is the earliest point in the calendar year the milestone has been reached.
Last year the figure of 10,000 was not reached until May 24, while in 2023 it was June 17.
Data on Channel crossings was first collected in 2018.
The current total for 2025, 10,358, is up 45% on the number recorded at this point last year (7,167) and 79% higher than the same point in 2023 (5,799), according to PA news agency analysis of the data.
People continued to make the journey across the Channel on Tuesday.
Pictures showed arrivals wearing life jackets being brought ashore in a Border Force boat and being met by officials in Dover, Kent.
The figures come as the Government has vowed to crack down on people smuggling across the Channel by handing counter-terror style powers to police and intensifying collaboration with France and other countries to dismantle criminal business models.
Asked about the Channel crossings on Tuesday, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said that gangs have been “taking advantage of the much higher number of calm weather days”.
Asked whether she thought she was doing a good job of stopping crossings, she told Times Radio: “The boats are high and this is undermining border security, it’s putting lives at risk.
“It’s why it’s so essential to take action on the criminal gangs that are underpinning this vile trade in people.”
Ms Cooper later said the situation “cannot continue” where “the impact on our border security of the weather is so significant”.
She also told BBC Breakfast changes would come in over the next few months after persuading the French government to change their rules to allow police to intervene in more crossing attempts where migrants are already in the water.
Ms Cooper added: “We’ve now persuaded the French government to change their rules, to change their laws effectively, so that the French police can intervene with those boats and prevent people getting on them.”
But shadow home secretary Chris Philp said of the milestone: “Britain’s borders are being torn apart under Labour.
“This year is already the worst on record for small boat crossings after over 10,000 illegal immigrants arrived in Britain, but Labour just sit on their hands.”
The figures come as the Government unveiled amendments to its Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill currently going through Parliament.
A new measure to be included in the bill will ban migrants convicted of sex offences and placed on the sex offenders register from claiming asylum in the UK.
The amendment will also set a 24-week target for first-tier immigration tribunals to decide on appeals of those living in asylum seeker supported accommodation, or who are foreign national offenders, in a bid to cut the asylum backlog.
But the Law Society of England and Wales raised concerns that the target for first-tier immigration tribunals will be “unworkable” in practice as the justice system is already struggling to cope with current demand.
