This is the moment an Express reporter was stopped by the French police as he attempted to report on illegal migration to Britain.

Investigations editor Zak Garner-Purkis was approached by officers as he tracked a group of migrants who had boarded a bus from the centre of Calais to a dirt road beside a beach popular for launching dinghies.

The cops demanded to see identification documents, which they photographed, and radioed a colleague.

After seeming to confirm he was a journalist, Garner-Purkis was let go.

However, it was a very different process for the migrants he was following.

After checking the journalist’s documents, the police cars accelerated past him at great speed to catch up with the migrants.

They stopped and lined up behind the police car, waiting for questioning. But the police officers didn’t even get out of the vehicle; they just waved the small boat travellers past.

When the Express found the migrants later that evening, they said the cops had “told us we could go”.

This was not an isolated incident. During the Express’s three-day reporting trip to cover the small boat migrant crossings, officers stopped the team on seven different occasions.

They examined ID documents, took photographs and questioned the reporting team about their reasons for being in France each time.

The interactions were mostly polite and respectful. However, there were also times when it disrupted the team’s reporting.

When the Express saw a bus filled with migrants preparing to cross the Channel being given a police escort, they attempted to find out what was happening.

But police officers stopped the reporting team’s vehicle and prevented them from seeing where the migrants were taken.

The following day, Garner-Purkis saw one of the officers involved in pulling the team over. The cop demanded to check his ID documents and became more confrontational in his questioning.

After verifying his identity as a journalist, the policeman claimed the Express needed a permit to film the migrant crisis in France and that photos were taken without his permission.

His questioning was only halted when a senior officer intervened which triggered officers to allow Garner-Purkis to leave.

During the reporting trip to France, the Express also made the shocking discovery that traffickers were transporting migrants on small boats to England for free on the basis that they could work illegally to pay off the debt once in Britain.

This revelation came just days after food delivery firms were told by the Government to tighten up security measures to prevent the illegal employment of asylum seekers, which was exposed by an Express investigation last month.

This week, the total number of small boat arrivals this year passed 20,000, a milestone that Reform UK leader Nigel Farage criticised on social media.

“It is a record and will only increase if we continue to give them everything when they arrive,” he wrote on X.