A record number of migrants have crossed the Channel in small boats this year, despite Sir Keir Starmer’s pledge to “smash the gangs”. Some 5,847 asylum seekers have been detected in 106 boats so far this year, including 335 on Sunday.

This is already higher than the 5,435 migrants who arrived in January, February and March 2024 – at the time a record for the first quarter of a calendar year. It is also well above the 3,793 arrivals in the first three months of 2023 and the 4,548 in the equivalent period in 2022. The cumulative total for 2025 of 5,847 people is up 36% on this point last year (4,306) and 59% higher than at this stage in 2023 (3,683), according to analysis.

In March alone, 3,791 migrants have crossed the Channel in 67 boats.

The figures come as the Government has vowed to crack down on people smuggling with plans to introduce new criminal offences and hand counter terror-style powers to police and enforcement agencies to curb Channel crossings.

Last week, the French coastguard confirmed two migrants died in two days after trying to cross the Channel on Wednesday and Thursday.

A migrant died on a dangerously overcrowded dinghy which had been shadowed by the French navy for hours.

The French coastguard was alerted to “many” migrant boats attempting to launch overnight.

The rescue ship, Ridens, followed a dinghy packed with about 40 asylum seekers from a beach in Dunkirk to another pick-up point near Gravelines, where dozens more climbed on.

Emergency crews were then forced to rescue three people who had fallen into the water and 12 more who begged to be evacuated.

One of those lifted from the boat was unconscious, taking the death toll in the Channel this year to as many as nine, according to charities in France.

The boat then shockingly continued to Britain with about 80 people on board.

The use of “taxi boats”, where smugglers quietly launch the boat in a canal or quieter part of the beach and then pick up larger numbers of migrants down the coastline, has surged in recent months and has been linked to a soaring death toll.

This tactic has prevented French police from blocking asylum seekers from climbing onto a boat because their laws claimed this could endanger lives.

Another migrant died on Wednesday after being rescued from the water when another dinghy got into difficulty off a French beach.

French authorities were informed a group of people, trying to board an inflatable for an attempt to cross the Strait of Dover, were in difficulty in the Equihen-Plage.

The boat had set sail an hour earlier from Hardelot-Plage 25 miles south of Calais.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “We all want to end dangerous small boat crossings, which threaten lives and undermine our border security.

“The people-smuggling gangs do not care if the vulnerable people they exploit live or die, as long as they pay.

“We will stop at nothing to dismantle their business models and bring them to justice.”