'It’s definitely happening': South coast should be monitored as Border Force union warns migrant boats 'definitely' arriving undetected

Migrant boats are ‘definitely’ arriving along the south coast completely undetected, the Border Force union warned, after two beach landings were recorded in two days.

A former Border Force boss has said the entire south coast should be monitored for migrant crossings, not just the narrowest section of the Channel – the Dover Strait – to intercept beach landings.

This comes after a Cabinet minister said not every migrant boat can be intercepted, the day after 21 people were detained when a boat evaded Border Force to reach the beach of Samphire Hoe in Dover.

The ISU union, which represents Border Force officers, also claimed more uncontrolled landings were taking place than the public are aware of and the Home Office was able to record because some boats are landing on beaches completely undetected.

And although not thought to be frequent, there is no way to judge the scale of the problem, it said.

Asked if boats were arriving completely undetected, ISU spokeswoman Lucy Moreton told the Press Association: “It’s absolutely, definitely happening.”

Describing them as “known unknowns”, she said: “If no-one sees them, no-one sees them.

“But we know that we’ve had abandoned vessels, we’ve had reports of uncontrolled landings all the way down to Falmouth.

“If we don’t look for it, we don’t know it’s happening. We don’t know it’s happening, we don’t have to deal with it.”

She said monitoring of the Channel was “very good” between Calais and Dover but it was harder to identify and detect boats which set sail further west along the French coast.

Ms Moreton added: “There has always been an understanding that this was probably happening. Ultimately, we do not know how many are not identified, or how many are lost at sea, because we just don’t have that monitoring that we do from the beaches around the Calais area.”

While some reports from members of the public or abandoned dinghies and personal belongings found on beaches could be accounted for by “holidaymakers playing with a boat”, some of those are “likely statistically to be an uncontrolled landing we haven’t detected”, she said.

According to the Home Office, no Channel crossings without an escort had been officially recorded since September 6, 2025, but Ms Moreton said there had “absolutely” been undetected crossings in the past year.

Former Border Force director general Tony Smith told PA beach landings were a “big worry”.

He said: “We’ve got technology – radar and drones and surveillance – but clearly, it didn’t work on this particular occasion.

“All I can assume is that somehow the systems that we have got in place to detect each landing has failed for some reason or other.

“It’s possible that the smaller vessel evaded the radar altogether.”

He suggested they may have wanted to “evade capture altogether” and avoid biometric checks which could flag a criminal record or had already crossed the Channel before.

It was “very unlikely” the boats had unwittingly drifted to the beaches undetected, Mr Smith added.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said the uncontrolled landings were “not acceptable” and insisted they were “incredibly rare”.

She said: “But even one is one too many.

“That is why I have ordered an urgent review by the Border Security Command into how this happened, and what must be done to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”