Undercover on a migrant dinghy: French police help the smugglers

0:04The Telegraph.

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1:35He tells us the incredible story of his seven-hour journey and how the French police are actually aiding the criminals. Welcome to this special edition of The Daily Tea with me, Camilla Tominy. The intelligence that I have gained about the smuggling routes and operation is absolutely second to none. This is nuts. So the guy who helps you travel across the channel in the dinghy illegally is now being put up at the state's expense and probably running a criminal network from his asylum seeker accommodation. Yes. A British undercover reporter has become the first journalist to cross the English Channel in a migrant dinghy, exposing the criminal people smugglers and chaos on the French beaches to enter the UK.

2:22Telegraph writer and talks international editor Isabel Oakeshott worked with reporter Christian Drogan of Watchmen UK to successfully cross the English Channel from France to Britain inside an illegal migrant dinghy. Working alongside Oakshot, Drogon spent weeks embedded deep within human trafficking networks across the channel while living on the streets and in migrant camps as a British criminal on the run. We're going to be speaking to both Christian and Isabel, but just before we do that, a reminder, The Daily Tea is moving home. We're going to be setting up our own YouTube channel. You must subscribe.

2:57It's happening in the coming weeks. Nothing will change. The content will remain the same. Me and Tim Stanley will still be here at 5pm every day. We're just moving so that we've got our own little environment in which to flourish. isabel oakshot welcome back to the daily tea this is a top scoop how on earth do you even begin to put a story together like this well it was an extraordinary mission and a huge effort and the truth is that i underestimated how difficult it would be um i've i've had this idea in my head for literally for years now but finding someone who can make it happen um was another question Clearly, I'm not going to do that.

3:41It's not that I'm afraid, although it is frightening. But with the best will in the world, someone that looks like me is going to stick out even more than someone that looked like the undercover reporter who eventually did the job. So I had to find the right partnership, basically, and that is working with Christian. He's a really interesting guy. I know you're going to be talking to him later, but his background is as a builder. He hasn't been a journalist for years and years. And he's got an incredible skill of being able to talk to anyone. And he's also very, very courageous. So in that, I found the right person.

4:22And we have been working on this basically for over a year, trying to make it happen. And what we both initially underestimated is just how much of a relationship we would need to build with one or more smugglers to make this happen. I thought, and I think probably a lot of people would imagine, that if you arrive in northern France with a pocket full of euros, a lot of euros, then somebody is going to let you on a migrant dinghy. That turned out to be hopelessly naive. This is highly organised. The people traffickers know exactly who is on those boats and they are sure as heck not going to lightly allow on a white British bloke.

5:12obviously why because they imagine that that white British bloke is probably an undercover police officer or intelligence services so we spent a lot of time failing and having to evolve a different cover story to what we started with and Christian will tell you more about what the cover cover story was. But suffice to say that this took about five attempts and we spent many weeks one way or another in the migrant camps of Calais and Dunkirk, refining how we were going to approach this. And of course, none of that time was wasted because we were all the while gathering more intelligence from what we observed.

5:56Why did you decide to do it in the first place, Isabella? Look, I appreciate that the idea of smashing the gangs and stopping the boat has been one perpetuated by successive prime ministers. None have been successful. We're still seeing people come across the channel by barely inflatable dinghy in their droves. Why was there the need to actually infiltrate the smuggling network? I'm all about getting to the truth of the biggest stories and the biggest issues that are facing our country at the moment. And for me, the ongoing invasion of our country by thousands of people about whom we know basically nothing is the single biggest issue that really gets my blood up.

6:42I just find it such an outrage on so many levels. And, you know, illegal immigration is much wider than just the channel crossings, but the channel crossings are the most scandalous example of what is going on in terms of the loss of control of our borders. This is a national security emergency, in my opinion. And to really get into the heart of it, to understand what is going on here, I'm afraid you can't turn up on the beaches of northern France with a camera, an obvious camera and a microphone as a working journalist and be out there as a journalist for obvious reasons. First of all, by the way, because the gendarme, the French authorities have become immensely hostile to the British media.

7:36They don't want us there. They don't want us embarrassing them, exposing their ineptitude, their laziness, if you like, their casualness about this whole thing. They just do not want British reporters there. And they are actively obstructive to journalists doing their work. It's extraordinary to observe the way that they routinely stop and question and search journalists, but not the illegal immigrants who have broken into France as well before heading on their way, being waved off by the French police. So you can't operate openly and really get much. Yeah, sure, you can get some great footage and there are brilliant people doing that.

8:19A photographer called the Nowhere Photographer who gets some amazing stuff and is also very brave. You get a lot by you get a bit by standing on the beaches. You get more by wading into the water. But this is just the tip of it that such photographers and reporters are capturing. They're capturing the externality, the last visible bit of it before those migrants go on their not so very merry way. As for politicians, well, do you trust them to tell us the truth about what's really going on here? Do people think that the politicians know what's going on because ain't no politicians going and living in those migrant camps?

8:58Absolutely no way can they do that. So to get even the slightest bit of a grip on what's going on, I think the only way is to go undercover. The only way is to try to actually live alongside these migrants to deal with the criminal gangs. And this isn't the first time that you've taken on the so-called establishment. Obviously, we remember you for the lockdown files. You collaborated with The Telegraph on that during Covid, or at least in the aftermath of Covid, to expose the sort of WhatsApp government that was being run by Boris Johnson when you exposed Matt Hancock, the former health secretary's private messages.

9:38On this, some will say, look, this isn't responsible journalism. Christian, who we're going to speak to in just a minute, could have been badly injured. The Home Office presumably have been quite critical of your approach to this story. What has the response been from the authorities? Well, it's very, it's quite an amusing one because the Home Office publicly has described this as, and I quote, reckless. Privately, they want our intelligence. A different part of the Home Office has asked for a meeting with Christian so that he can tell them what he found. And quite right, too, that's them doing their job.

10:18I mean, they were he will tell you more about how they reacted. How did Border Force react when when they realized that there was a reporter getting off that boat into the processing facility? And that's all quite interesting because, again, no one has ever seen that bit of it. And one of the surprises is actually how good Border Force were. They were really on it. You know, that is a smart, sharp operation, that pickup that they bring people over. They spotted him straight away and knew something was off. And he'll tell you a little bit more about that. But for the Home Office to condemn this type of journalism as reckless, I find truly flabbergasting.

11:02What is reckless is a government, successive governments, continuing to allow the invasion of our country by reams of young men who come from deeply troubled backgrounds, who have very little to no English at all. They're not paying in most cases for their passage, not in a conventional way, which begs the question, what services are they providing to the people traffickers in return for coming over? And here's the other thing, you know, if you're still not convinced that we needed to go undercover to expose what's really happening, we recorded on the boat that Christian eventually took across the channel, the boat driver having a ferocious argument with his boss.

11:48What language was that in? It was in Farsi, Kurdish Farsi. In other words, that is a language that is widely spoken in parts of Iran, begging the question, are these boats being managed, being driven, being operated by Iranians? I don't think people need to be reminded Iran is a rogue state. Iran is a hostile state. Iran does not wish us well. This is a national security emergency. This is public interest journalism. And I will take on anyone who says it was reckless. Yes, it was dangerous, but it was extremely calculated. we spent years the whole of that year laying the ground for this working out where the risks were we couldn't cover off every risk it was dangerous and you know I carried that responsibility I would have been absolutely vilified if something had happened to Christian so yes it's a risk but I'm prepared to keep taking risks keep sticking my neck out I know he is to to get to the truth of what's happening.

12:59Isabel Oakeshott thank you very much indeed for joining me on The Daily Tea and we'll be speaking to Christian Drogon the man in the dinghy next.

13:11The more you listen to your kids the closer you'll be. So we asked kids what do you want your parents to hear? I feel sometimes that I'm not listened to I would just want you to listen to me more often and evaluate situations with me and lead me towards success. Listening is a form of love. Find resources to help you support your kids and their emotional well-being at SoundItOutTogether.org. That's SoundItOutTogether.org. Brought to you by the Ad Council and Pivotal.

13:48christian welcome to the daily tea i was looking at the comments underneath the first person piece that you've written for the telegraph which by the way we will link to the show notes somebody said one of our readers this bloke's got balls as big as church bells and i thought well that probably does sum it up before we get into your experience on the high seas how did you get into this because as isabel says you were once a builder and now you run this organization called watchman uk so sorry how did you make the transition from from being a northern a northern sort of lad northern builder yeah so well really i'm from a town called rochdale that's where i grew up yes some bad things have happened in that town which you know you don't need me to go into most people know what sort of things they are.

14:34I actually know some people in that town who've suffered, you know, some girls who've suffered bad things and, you know, sort of friends of friends and that sort of thing. And I found myself thinking, you know, one day, hang on a sec, you know, I can't look back on life thinking I've not done anything as a man of England. So, you know, I mean, I hit the streets, started making a few videos and then I got in touch with Isabel, had a few ideas and then, you know, went over to France and that's where the idea was spawned really. Wow. So just let's take us back. We've got to be careful with this because we obviously don't want to give people an instruction manual as to how to come into the UK illegally.

15:12So you've got to be a little bit careful. But Isabel's saying this was a year in the making. So I'm imagining that the first stage of this is actually finding a smuggler who will agree to take you. so I'd imagine that involves quite a lot of social media searches and getting on telegram and messaging random people yeah so I mean we obviously we had our first initial trip there which is a bit of a recce um and then where did you exactly go and what did you find when you did the first recce we headed to the north of France and we thought right let's find you know um let's find the camp where we'd seen Patrick Christie's that sort of thing yes from you know let's get out there let's let's sort of see what we can find out so that's where we went we we um we're headed to the dunkirk jungle as it's as it's dubbed um which is uh which is just a woodland in loon loon plage and uh it's just wall to wall with tents and migrants and and um charities and take us inside the scenes there like i mean yeah i'd imagine pretty squalid conditions it's not great it's not great there's there's one main camp where where the smugglers stay and that has got um that's got light switches you know i mean it's literally got indoor outdoor lights on the huts and stuff that it's got generators running it it's it's quite it's quite an established sort of a part of the part of the camp but who is entitled to stay there then that this is like the top guys who sort of run the the whole camp and the whole operation really so that camp exists for smuggling and it's got lights on and off and it can't be cleared out by the French?

16:46To be honest, there's two main camps right now in the north of France. That's Calais and Dunkirk. And all of the people who are staying in those camps, all of the people have one main intention, which is to get to the UK. So forgive my ignorance, but why on earth aren't these camps smashed up? Well, they're often dismantled to some level. In the process of that happening, what also happens is the police discover explosive guns and knives um i've not really heard of any arrests when when they dismantle the camps um i've seen it happen myself i've seen you know the armed police stand there and yeah and they sort of you know sometimes they bulldoze them sometimes they just rip the tents a few tents down it's it happens to different levels but yeah i mean it's those camps are and especially now they've become more hostile they are highly highly dangerous places now for someone you know for a reporter or for you know just for an average person and and when we talk about smugglers what kind of people are we talking about here where have they come from how old are they and how are they operating in plain sight so they i mean they are you know that if you don't cross the path that they're not necessarily um they're not going to do you any harm they're not out to get you um as i found out you know um but they yeah the police just turned a blind eye to i mean these people are firing firing fully automatic machine guns in the woods and the police are driving through the woods and just sort of you know turning the cheek the other way right that that's there's just a level of craziness that's going on over there and probably the best way that i can describe parts of the north of france right now is it's a war zone that's how it feels and and the nationalities of those running these smuggling gangs?

18:32I mean, the most accurate I could be is probably just to say that the Middle Eastern. Yes. And have we got stationed in northern France, the kingpins of this operation, or are they elsewhere across Europe? And these people who are kind of getting the migrants onto the dinghies, are they like your kind of smuggling middle managers? Who are they? Yeah, so they're obviously quite well-connected people. And some of them speak good English as well really good english um but there's there's loads of different tiers so you've got the the main organizers then they've got helpers then you've got group leaders who get the groups to the boats there's so many different tiers to it um and it's very hard to get a look in to sort of see that's why we did what we did because is it rival gangs or is it a whole kind of thing cooperating with each other to get many migrants we thought it was rival gangs i think everybody thought it was rival gangs initially i've heard them communicating you know different calls arguing about money and so i i think it's one big whole network and it's sort of deeply intertwined to some level to some extent okay yeah so let's fast forward to the point where you decide you want to quote invade your own country and there's a few problems here christian you're white you don't speak arabic and most of the people handling the migrants are from the middle east you must have stuck out like a sore thumb you're there with your Rochdale accent what when you finally found somebody who was willing to smuggle you yeah weren't they deeply suspicious of your motivations they were um I so initially what happened was so a couple of weeks before I actually got the boat I was in France I'm on FaceTime to the to the smuggler who um I'd got whose number I'd got off TikTok and who I'd been speaking to for a while I'd gone into the camp into the Dunkirk jungle and he was, you know, he said there's a guy going to come out the trees in a minute on the phone, walk over to him.

20:28So I've just, I've walked over to the guy. He's got me a tent. Yeah, sit down. Anyway, a couple of minutes, 20 minutes later, they've sort of said, you know, European, why are you here? We think you might be a police informer. Shotguns are being fired. So I thought, right, I best get out of here. What do you mean shotguns are being fired? In the air? Yeah, in the air, just about 20 metres away. What, just to scare you? Yeah, but I'm kind of used to that, really in that situation it happens all day long it's not it's not out of the ordinary right pistols shotguns machine guns in those camps are being fired all day all night long okay into the air my head explode because it's crazy that basically you're saying that there is like open criminality and armed men operating in northern france and the gendarmerie and others are just walking around going, oh, well, you know, that's the way it works.

21:18Well, that's it. It's become a norm out there. I mean, it sounds like I'm exaggerating when I say that I've become in that situation, I've become used to hearing the pistol. You know, there's no one screaming or anything. So you sort of think, well, they must just be firing it into the air. Also, I mean, reminder, everybody, these people are criminals. They're engaging in criminality every minute of every waking day, shipping people illegally to the UK. so we shouldn't be that surprised that they're firing guns in the air. They see what they're doing differently. They see their duty as, so they see what they're doing as like sort of, they are offering the people who need a service to get to the UK, they're offering them the service and making it happen.

22:01That's how they see it. So they're like ferry operators. Yeah, effectively. Just with dinkies. Okay, so you meet a man in the bushes, guns are fired, but eventually you find somebody that's willing to smuggle you and you convince him that you need to get back to the UK on a dinghy rather than buy easy jet, how? So I've just turned around and obviously I left the camp that time. I stayed in touch with the same guy after the shotgun that time. I stayed in touch with the same guy and I said, listen, I promise you I won't cause you any problems if you get me on a boat safely. I wasn't in Barcelona, I was in Manchester.

22:34I said, I'm in Barcelona right now. I said, I'm on the run from the UK authorities and I've not been back for five years. I need to get back to the UK. Can you help me out or shall I find someone else? Because there's plenty of other people. He's gone, no, brother, don't worry. I'll sort you out. So I thought, well, I've told him straight. I've said, listen, I'm British. You know, I need to get back. Are you going to help me or not? So in his mind, he's probably thinking, well, why would he tell me he's British if he's undercover? So then I've sort of played on that. And obviously it's got me to the point of where I've then thought, well, they thought I was a police informer.

23:07If I stay away from the Dunkirk camp. So I've said, listen, I don't want to go back to that camp. Put me anywhere else. I've got my 1 ,400 euros on me. I sent him a picture of that. I said, if you get me to the boat, I'll pay this money at any point. I'll put my trust in you. I'll hand it over to whoever you want. And sure enough, it just seems to happen. And is 1 ,400 pounds per person the going rate these days, Chris? Well, no. That's if you turn up and you have the money to pay. In cash? Yeah, so 1 ,400 euros in cash, yeah, handed over. at the going rate well that that's a whole new conversation because um some people work on the french side for the smugglers to get the to earn their let's call it boat ticket yes um so so they they work by helping the smugglers on on that side on the french side and then other people um like the guy who who i've become let's say friends with um he's in a migrant hotel right now in the uk he came over on the boat with me Oh what, so your smuggler is now getting room and board at the expense of UK taxpayer He was the smuggler's assistant so yeah, he's I'm in touch with him What, he's now lodged an asylum claim?

24:22He's in the UK now This linchpin? Yeah, yeah, yeah And what nationality is he, if you could give us that? He's Syrian Is he? Yeah, yeah Right, okay, carry on so um so yeah so he he told me he said it's very hard because you're doing all this through google translate don't forget so he's turned around to me and he said listen he said uh yeah how much how much money did you pay i said 1400 he said oh he said me i pay nothing so i'm okay how did you pay nothing he said um um in turkey he was someone has approached him and said yeah if you If you go over, I'll pay for your boat fare or whatever. When you get to the UK, you work for me.

25:04So obviously some sort of criminal gang sort of stuff is going on on the UK side. What would he be doing over in the UK? I mean, it could be. I've not got to the bottom of that yet, but it could be drug dealing. It could be Deliveroo. It could be, you know, anything. This is nuts. So the guy who helps you travel across the channel in the dinghy illegally is now being put up at the state's expense and probably running a criminal network from his asylum seeker accommodation. Yes. And that's probably not the only example of its kind. Oh, I mean, that's commonplace. Yeah, so a lot of these people who the left are holding up refugee welcome signs for are the ones smuggling the people in the first place at the heart of this criminality.

25:53Yeah, I mean, the whole refugee welcome signs, it's not even worth batting an eyelid at. It's just so incorrect. It's untrue. Why do you say that? Because, of course, we did have rhetoric from former ministers like Darren Jones saying most of the people in these boats are women and children. Well, I mean, my boat was 35, 36 people, including myself. And we're all, you know, it was a boat full of men. So don't get me wrong. I have seen women and children on the boats, but very few and far between. and some of the situations are very sad when you see them them in that situation let me tell you you know there's moments where I was like holding back tears on this trip you know it's hard it's emotionally hard well at one point and the first trip that ended up getting aborted because the engine wasn't big enough to accommodate the dinghy and in the end the French authorities come and in a rare moment of good sense like the boat let me just caveat that the reason why they popped that boat is because they realized that boat was never taken off okay you know I was on it I can verify that.

26:50Just to be clear, the documentary will show that you get on one boat and then it is stopped and everyone has to go back and then you get on a second boat and you make the point that actually if you've paid your money, a second boat will arrive a little bit like train line. Sorry, your train has been cancelled. Another one will be here in the morning. And you do get that on that and you are intercepted by border force and we'll come on to that. But in the first boat, you record these completely chaotic scenes of people charging towards this boat. And in the

27:19on board i couldn't get her up she had that much weight on her i couldn't i couldn't pick her up um you know and she was panicking was she carrying a check were there any children on that on that first one there was there was a couple of children actually um there was about five children on that because because i'd traveled down to the beach with them people from the camp what did you think when you saw children i mean how old were they that was that was a i mean the hairs are standing on on end now i've got goosebumps because i'm laid down in these sort of spiky bushes and i'm looking at these kids with no life jackets on i'm looking at the sudanese parents thinking you don't know the dangers of what you're about to put your kids into i'm looking at this this dead sweet girl she's playing with the bugs and the leaves the police are going past on the beach we're hiding from the police like i'm and i'm just thinking how am i going to keep these people these kids alive if this boat goes down in the water or something happens none of these have got life jackets on so that i've got all this going through in my head as well i'm thinking i can't i can't say anything right now but you know you're potentially i'm potentially gonna have a big problem on my hands here when i'm witnessing these people because at the end of the day you are an imposter in this situation you have got a responsibility exactly yeah in your mind a duty of care exactly children are drowning you're gonna have to help exactly exactly what how old were they do you think approximately so there was um one covered in a sheet with a bottle um there was i said properly an infant yeah and then there was another there was no in that same family there was another uh four kids um so yeah parents were bringing over five kids yeah and uh they had sort of i think maybe uncles or cousins who were helping them along so what do you think was the age of the oldest child in that scenario i'd say it's hard to tell but i'd say about nine ish yeah about nine or ten something yeah gosh and that that that moment stuck with me to be honest that was very sad because you know some people go well why they're putting what you know if they're doing that they must be desperate to get the boat no let me tell you i'll tell you there's a couple of things actually you are desperate i was desperate to get on that boat because you are so knackered and so in so much physical pain when you when you get to the point you just want to get on the boat and get it over and done with because of the whole camping out just yeah just just the whole sort of you know early in the sleep yeah running from the police the stress yeah and so but by the way you had arrived in france some of these people have already made thousands of miles exactly yeah yeah yeah so um so that the whole sort of but but the other sort of side of it with it being um unfair is these people are being sold a dream that doesn't exist and and the governments are allowing it to happen they're allowing these people to risk their family's life to cross the channel for a dream that doesn't exist you know because it's quite obvious that these people smugglers are making are running a multi-billion pound industry so they're quite obviously going to use uh sell these people customers that you know the dream so i wonder what happened to that sudanese family then because they were on the boat that didn't end up launching yeah so well actually one one thing that actually does happen is you know once the boats do set off like everybody's given a life jacket by another boat out let's see um a french search and rescue boat so yeah they are handed like everyone's handed a life jacket no one travels over without one oh really but so they started without one and then they got one yeah but but they were everyone sent back what's that on that first boat yeah on that first boat there was one guy arrested and obviously i mean you know when they were pointing the guns at us i was thinking i was more thinking well even if it's rubber bullets i don't fancy catching one so um you know i just sort of legged it down the beach and everybody else did too and what do people disperse they're not even arrested on this on the shore there was one guy arrested who was who was trying to get the boat going basically um he was arrested at gunpoint on on the shore so but that just suggests that the french police say well we foiled this one and then you will know you'll try and go again the next day or the day after that one of the most amusing figures for me is shabana moods 46 000 uh crossings have been prevented well let me tell you that is the most manipulated uh statistic I have ever come across and it's insulting to the British public and British taxpayer whose money's been sent over to France um it you know I've got multiple bits of evidence which disprove it and also the fact that I was one of those stats so the police have stopped that boat that they would then mark their own homework to say oh this is a crossing prevented but it wasn't because it was never taken off anyway and then guess what a few people from that boat including myself and a few with us we're on the on the boat the next day anyway so yeah so that that's that's an illusion that the uh the home office of the home office of putting out with that stuff i mean would you say that those who have made the journey from wherever they have come from sudan syria iran as isabel pointed out earlier and we'll we'll get into that in just a moment once they've paid the money and they've got that far i mean once they've got to dunkirk or calais yeah come what may they're getting on a boat yeah there's no there's no turning back at that point you know there's there's no reason why you would turn back but i did actually meet one woman to be fair from somalia and had really good long chat with her she actually um she actually sort of you know said oh will i get her a beer so i've got her a couple of beers where was this this was laid down she was laid down on the beach and i was just having a chat with her and she actually had decided she was watching him go she decided actually i'm going to stay in france she said and when i said She said, it's too risky to go over the channel now.

32:49She said, my daughters need me. I said, where are your daughters? She said, oh, they're in Somalia. She said, when I get my passport for France, she said, then I'll bring them over to France. It's like, it does almost seem like these people, you know, it's a choice for them to decide where they want to go. So first mission to reach the UK is aborted. You said the second time you end up on a boat with other blokes, about 35 of you. Yeah. Then what happens? first of all how is that a success when the other one wasn't was it a better boat or so this was so there's some level of that first boat which i think might have been a decoy sort of the smugglers put a rubbish one out and they let the police have one um which was you know is oh do you think they play that game then keep the police happy for a day and then when they're looking in the other direction we'll take off on another boat well that's it you know i mean if you imagine the police were under a lot of pressure on the 2nd of august which was the day the boat got punctured because there'd been so many crossings since Andy Burnham took office and then you know on the 3rd of August Andy Burnham was on on the Wycliffe's Dover sort of having to speak about it so so yeah I do think that they play that game and they sort of throw the odd um the odd bit of helping hand to the police just so they can put a new story up saying oh we punched one or whatever um but yeah the second one sets off and we get to the beach we leg it down the beach well we've We've been watching it come for quite a while because the Navy ship follows it.

34:16By the way, this is the other thing that really interested me. For some reason, I thought that the dinghy would be inflated on shore and then you get all in. I mean, the ship is being shipped in. Well, I was sort of thinking, are these boats coming from offshore? Where are they coming from? Well, there's still this belief. No one's actually sort of taken pictures of them getting run down the beach anymore. So I'm looking at these boats out of sea. I'm thinking, hang on a second, that boat's right out of sea. Why is it so far out? In my mind, I'm wondering whether there's some aspect of them being inflated on another boat out of sea and then thrown in and then driven to, because these boats roll up.

34:56You know, the inside of the boat is like a paddleboard construction. So it gets pumped up and then the outside gets pumped up separately. So it's like a paddle. Where would they be being launched from? They could be being launched from other vessels out of sea, which is... Yeah, I meant like from land. What land would they be launched from? They would just be run down dunes or whatever, inflated on the beach and thrown in the sea. But that's not a bad theory, right, that there's some vessel in the middle. It is just that. I've not got any evidence behind it. It's just a speculation. All right, but then you would be asking the question, why don't the authorities, French or British, infiltrate the boat, where the boats are coming from, if that is potentially happening?

35:38Every time you see those dinghies out of sea, it's accompanied by a French vessel or a NATO vessel. But that seems nuts in itself. So the French are literally accompanying empty boats and seemingly they're accompanying full boats. And we're paying them, I think we've already paid them, 623 million quid for the privilege. Well, there's another key aspect to the French accompanying these boats. when these boats take off they have a group of migrants so maybe like five migrants who've helped the smugglers they are normally about four or five smugglers on um you know well three to five smugglers they'll have on uh who've sort of orchestrated it and obviously have some quite deep level of involvement and um yeah so that that is the point that the police should steam in uh you know and either push the boat back to um back to shore with their vessel because they could do with some of the smaller boats like like they took control of our boat at one point um but yeah so they could push these vessels back when there's not many people on them quite safely um or just puncture them at sea when they're on route well yeah i mean they could do but then then you've got the sort of safety of lives at sea law which is a whole other thing that people are you know but it's interesting your revelation which again i don't think people have fully appreciated that all of these crossings have quite a few smugglers on them.

37:02Yeah, yeah. Kind of like officiating. Yeah, they have smugglers on them. And, you know, the smugglers obviously get off at the last pickup. The one I was on, the last pickup was aborted. And what actually happened was the smugglers got onto the police boat and the police gave the smugglers a lift back to the beach. Knowing that they're smugglers or not? I mean, you say in your copy it was pretty obvious to you that they were smugglers. There's multiple occasions that I worked out who the smugglers were on the boats. It was very obvious. And I witnessed the police do nothing about it. When the police were literally right next to these people, didn't even search.

37:38Bearing in mind, most of the times I've come face to face with the police, as a journalist or as an undercover migrant, I've been searched, you know, top to bottom, inside my backpack and everything. So, you know, there's something that they're either missing it on purpose or they've just got their eyes shut. also you uh found a smuggler fairly easily using sort of social media connections and you mentioned tiktok there so you've also got another whole story to be told about the social media giants and others facilitating these communication networks which set up the smuggling in the first place right yeah yeah i mean it's there's there are in my opinion there are thousands of smugglers on tiktok it's laced with tiktok with smugglers and tiktok by the way because i've done stories and this will say that they are doing their level best to remove these profiles and infiltrate them themselves they might be they might be but one of the issues that um you know the western sort of the western country the western nations um have got is that our languages you know for example spanish english french our languages are more commonly spoken um on social media platforms i believe and they are more heavily policed so for example you know this this is a fact um you know arabic if i if i put a post on in our in arabic copied from a smuggler it'll be fine if i put a post on in english more than likely the same post but in english more than likely it will be flagged or you know or taken down so so english language is one of the most sort of um sure police languages all right so take us back onto the boat that is successful with you and your fellow fellow migrants on it at what how long are you on it before uk border control turn up so we're on it for um seven hours seven hours why does it take so long well it was it got quite choppy so we could only go so fast because the waves were that big i mean And, you know, it's like you just sort of, you get, if you go too fast, you're just getting smashed by words.

39:49I'm sorry, but wasn't this quite horrifying? Well, I mean, if we'd have gone down, I had a live jacket on and there was a French search and rescue five, ten metres behind us and a big navy ship all the way over. So you were being completely escorted. Oh, yeah. Listen, we were safe. I can swim and I've got a live jacket on. I'm, you know, apart from being cold in the middle of the channel and worried about what might be underneath me, you know, that's the worst of it. trick around oh my goodness people are i appreciate what you were saying about the sudanese kids because we don't want kids on the water without life jackets regardless of whether they're on a pleasure boat or an illegal dinghy okay let's just get that straight but this idea of like everybody crossing and they're in total and utter peril is a fallacy because you're saying they're either escorted by the french or escorted by the british at one point or other or are there also boats going at night and getting into trouble and actually no one knows that they're coming across well a couple of days before i'd i'd been down on the beach at night night and i was actually chased um by uh someone who was shouting to me uh fascist uk fascist uk you know these these sort of far left people with a big dog had chased me down the beach and i had to run um it wasn't very pleasant but anyway i ended up staying on that beach that night and about sort of about 12 o 'clock at night um there was a boat that had launched i knew it was going to go because i could see the people up and down the beach um and it went this was the only night time one i'd seen and because it was at night it was chaos um and actually there was there was a guy who obviously had got into difficulties trying to get on the boat and and he was he was he was lay on the beach and he was getting cpr don't know what happened to him so so there are dangers don't get me wrong and obviously there's certain days where maybe like eight might set off it overfaces the authorities so there's certain ones which can't be you know and obviously if my boat wasn't overcrowded it was actually very spacious like the guy said um when we bought it the last visit vip britain inshallah so you know um so so we actually had sort of a vip experience on the way over um managed to get an half an hour kipping on the boat um woke up on top of um one of the blokes sort of you know cuddled up to each other yeah i mean is there a spirit of camaraderie on board oh yeah definitely i mean you know everyone's sort of like can't wait to get there and it's quite exciting because in my mind i had to sort of actually believe that i'm you know sure i'm i'm doing it with these guys for the same reason you just well before we get onto your warm welcome by uk border force um you managed to film all this and i do urge people to watch the documentary on talk because um you filmed some extraordinary scenes how are you doing that with with my with my phone um because it's you know it's quite casual you can just have it in your hand and also with the ray-ban meta um sunglasses they've got a lot of camera in wow so you had them on the whole time and that's how because i'm thinking how the hell are you holding a phone while you're in the water yeah i also had a little dgi nano but that did did end up in the sea to be honest in all the chaos and nobody is suspicious of you there was while you're kind of obviously filming at least No, they weren't, to be honest.

42:56I think the one thing that kept me safe was the fact that, you know, I had a few beers with the people smugglers helper one night and we sort of became friends, you know, to some extent. You know, we sat there talking about life and stuff and he seemed to trust me, so, yeah. Some of the footage you record then is of UK border control in a boat stopping you. And, I mean, the guys in charge of that boat aren't mucking about, are they? The Brits, they are shouting at people. they're saying form an orderly queue uh they're not treating you with gloves they are so tell us about then what happened so from the point of getting rescued yeah so from the point of getting rescued obviously i step onto the border force boat the guy straight away says you're on the wrong boat um as if to say i should be on there on on the border force side not on the dinghy you know i've got sunburn no one else has got sunburn um and um yeah i mean i got on the boat I'm thinking, Jesus, I've been spotted already.

43:57So I finally get, you know, you're just sat on there, absolutely freezing cold. I'm keeping my head down. And I get to Dover, and I'm thinking, wow, that's, you know, there's light, there's cameras flashing at you as you're pulling up. So it's quite intimidating because, you know, the authorities, they bang on it from the moment you pull up. So you can feel that presence of border force, interforce, and the police. So when you get off, it's like straight away, they're telling you instructions. It's quite overwhelming in a way, especially for the migrants. So I'm thinking, well, there's no way I'm going to be able to get past this.

44:36I'll just act dumb and see what happens. So I've just sort of shrugged my shoulders when I was being asked questions. Said I was tired and sleepy. Anyway, they figured out that I was British. and they said, come on, mate, just tell us what the hell is going on here. I just said, well, you know, I've just invaded Britain, haven't I? So, you know, they were having a bit of a head-scratch moment at that. And I just said, listen, you know, if you want me to tell you what's going on, I will do, no problem. I said, I actually said to them, listen, I'm just trying to get information to keep the country safe the same way you're trying to keep the country safe.

45:16And they said, well, listen, just to get one thing straight, we're impartial. so they were very professional and one thing that really surprised me was how well run it was it was a clinical operation what to pick people up just from their side and what they are able to do as Border Force agents you're allowed to go on your way because you're a British citizen and this was a journalistic endeavour the counter-terror police came down Border Force police had a chat with me we all had a bit of a laugh about it showed each other respect both ways and that's where it was left But your fellow escapees your fellow invaders I mean is it true by the way that none of them have got any paperwork on them or did you see people with jiffy bags with passports in them?

46:02Not one of them has a piece of paperwork on them what they do is there's a moment where when they see the rescue boat it's like celebrate, the phones go into the air into the sea, you know it's like cheering, chucking the phones like that, like celebrating in yeah but also chuck in their phones so that they lose any evidence of contact with smuggling gangs presumably so just so there's no way that they can be traced in any way yeah so basically when border force pick these people up they're dealing with just blank blank yeah just a blank sheet of paper just just a bloke with nothing you know hence why the smugglers then end up being put up in asylum hostels yeah yeah exactly so what's your one big takeaway christian from this extraordinary experience of yours my one big takeaway is that the there are so many ways to stop this you know there's no there's no single one way to stop it it needs it needs a combination of methods and you know obviously the overriding factor is the will from the british government and the french government is not there to enable to stop to be able to stop this that's it i thought we've got another prime minister talking about smashing the gang yeah but you know for me after seeing what i've seen and i mean this from the bottom of my heart i believe they are not plans to stop the boats i believe they are plans to stop people being concerned and asking questions you know it's to is to keep the nation quiet for a little bit longer by you know to buy a bit more time so you don't think there's any genuine intention to stop what's happening in the channel well no because uh the the other side of it is um the the other side of it is to go a little bit on tangent is that the amount of videos appearing online now of people getting in the back of wagons has gone sky high.

47:46And that's not a recorded number. So that's sort of through the back door as well. So they might be sort of standing up and saying, oh, the figures are down on the votes, 50 % or whatever they've claimed it to be. But actually, they're not telling us all the rest of the story. Yeah. Christian, don't tell me that the next thing you're going to do is climb into somebody's camper van in Ardolo. well I couldn't possibly say Christian Frogan thank you very much for talking us through that I mean it really is remarkable what you gleaned from being on the boats and what you've uncovered and again your documentary with Isabel Oakshaw is on Talk TV thank you very much we'll be back tomorrow 5pm

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