Migrants cleared from Calais Jungle return on 86p public buses to try smuggling themselves across Channel again
Hundreds catch lift from campsite 30 miles along coast at Dunkirk
MIGRANTS cleared out of Calais are commuting back there on €1 (86p) public buses to launch fresh attempts to smuggle themselves across the Channel — without any intervention from the French authorities.
Hundreds have flocked to a makeshift campsite 30 miles along the coast at Dunkirk since the Jungle was cleared last November.
They are catching the cut-price number 501 public bus that runs past their new camp at Grande-Synthe and takes them straight to Calais.
Migrants are spending the night trying to smuggle themselves on board UK-bound lorries at the ferry port and Eurotunnel terminal.
If they are unsuccessful they then commute back to Dunkirk for food and shelter at the camp and try again the next night — all for an 86p ticket.
One French villager said: “It’s disgusting. These buses are meant to be for students and elderly to get around not used as a cheap way for migrants to get into Britain.
“Closing the Jungle has not changed a thing.”
Footage of migrants using the buses appeared on BBC’s Inside Out show this week.
One said: “I cannot say how many people but I see sometimes when I come to Calais the bus is full of refugees getting to Calais.”
It’s disgusting. These buses are meant to be for students and elderly to get around
Another added: “We get on the bus and try to get on a lorry. We try to get to London.”
The 501 bus to Calais runs three times a day and is regularly crammed with 30 migrants on each journey.
Packed with warm clothes and sleeping bags migrants make the return journey if they fail to smuggle themselves into Britain.
Dover MP Charlie Elphicke said: “It’s really important that these buses are stopped so that people can’t just go to Calais, try their luck and then go back home in the evening to the camp in Dunkirk.
“The situation has vastly improved in Calais since we got the Jungle camp dismantled.
“Yet we must remain vigilant and keep the pressure on the French to stop the Jungle returning – before the first tent is pitched.”
Everyone wants to get to Britain... Should we go back to Iraq and die there?
Richard Burnett, chief executive of the Road Haulage Association, said: “When the Jungle camp was dismantled last October, we warned that many migrants would remain near the coastline, ready for the opportunity to jump on the back of a UK-bound truck.
“It now looks as though we will be facing yet another summer of misery for hauliers.
"The grim reality is that desperate migrants are turning into commuters in a daily effort to cross the Channel as stowaways on the back of UK bound lorries — the authorities must act fast to protect the lives and livelihoods of hauliers.”
Hundreds have started living at the Grande-Synthe camp since the Calais Jungle was cleared.
It was France’s first ever internationally recognised refugee camp when it opened in March last year.
It has cost £15million to build and has cabins, toilets, heating, shared kitchens and a small hospital.
Kurdish migrant Arean Mohammed, 22, said: “We have 300 shelters here every shelter has five persons inside so it must be 1,500 men, women and children.
RELATED STORIES
“Everyone wants to get to Britain illegally. It is what we should do. Go back to Iraq and die there?
“I [would rather] die trying than go back.”
The 501 bus is a cut-price local bus service running between remote villages in Pas-de-Calais.
It runs six days a week and students under 18 travel free.
