- Title: FRANCE-MIGRANTS Migrants play hide-and-seek with French police
- Date: 22nd October 2014
- Summary: CALAIS, FRANCE (OCTOBER 22, 2014) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF MIGRANTS RUNNING BETWEEN TRUCKS IN QUEUE WAITING TO ACCESS PORT DRIVER HOLDING BATON CHASING MIGRANTS AWAY MIGRANTS BOARDING TRUCK MIGRANT CLOSING DOOR MIGRANT RUNNING AWAY MIGRANTS WALKING ON GRASS NEAR ROAD DRIVER WITH BATON / MIGRANT CALAIS POLICE UNION REPRESENTATIVE, GILLES DEBOVE, LOOKING AT TRUCKS (SOUNDBITE) (F
- Embargoed: 6th November 2014 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: France
- Country: France
- Topics: General
- Reuters ID: LVAB6XTRIR2XUZVK6D71JCO49B2V
- Story Text: Tensions were heightened in Calais on Wednesday (October 22) as desperate migrants continued to charge trucks bound for the United Kingdom and local police admitted they were struggling to keep up.
Earlier in the day, hundreds clashed with riot police sent in to ward off the crowds scrambling for access to the queues of vehicles waiting to board cross-Channel ferries, following 48 hours of increased tensions.
Local police unions said their units face an ever more challenging game of cat-and-mouse, ducking in and out of rows of lorries, trying to halt the migrants.
"We've realised over the last several months that the migrants' tactics have totally changed. There are still people who get through but unfortunately they don't have very much money left and now they'll try anything and everything in groups, sometimes hundreds even. There have been times in the last few months where they have been 300, 400, 500 on the bypass who storm the vehicles when they're stationary, as they are today," union representative Gilles Debove said.
He said they have become more desperate as the weather gets colder, turning to petty crime in the town. That has begun to have a serious impact on local residents.
Britain and France have collectively agreed to improve border checks to control an estimated 1,500 migrants, and Britain has promised increased help, including fencing to contain the migrants who are fleeing humanitarian crises in Africa and the Middle East.
But Debove remains sceptical.
"We've really got the feeling that once again Great Britain is buying its own security," he said.
"Do we need more grills up? I wonder if you wouldn't need to put grills up all round Calais to solve the problem," he added.
Stuart Stamford from Essex in the United Kingdom makes the trip three times a week, bringing mushrooms from Belgium to Cambridge and woodchip back the other way.
He said he sees failed attempts to board trucks all the time, and has had the roof of his lorry split open in one incident.
"I see them walking down the hard shoulder all the time. They're obviously very desperate but it doesn't help us when they're damaging our vehicles trying to get into the country," he said, adding the real problem was criminal networks who facilitate their journey as far as northern France.
The port has long been a magnet for illegal migrants trying to reach Britain, where they believe they are more likely to find work. Britain is not one of the 26 European states who have abolished internal borders.
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