A British journalist recently had himself smuggled from France to Great Britain by boat to get an inside look at the migrant trafficking operation and witnessed French security officials who were largely ineffective at stopping migrant boats but more than adequate to help smugglers themselves return to France.
On Tuesday, The Guardian published the account of Watchman Media undercover journalist Christian Drogan, who embarked on a quest to get himself onto a migrant dinghy that would cross the Channel from northern France back into Britain. After several failed attempts at passing himself off as a migrant, he eventually succeeded with a cover story that he was a British criminal “who had been on the run in Spain and now needed to sneak back into the UK. Eventually, I found an agent who was prepared to take a risk on an English ‘brother.’ We agreed the fee – €1,400 – and I was linked to a handler.”
Drogan goes on to detail the elaborate process of eventually corralled to a migrant holding camp in the woods and the grueling conditions therein before finally being directed to a beach and waiting several hours in the hot sun for a dinghy along with a group of actual migrants. Before launch, however, their boat stalled due to engine trouble, at which point French officers stormed the boat, arresting several of the smugglers while the migrants (including Drogan) dispersed.
Lest this be taken as proof of French diligence in border security, however, Drogan noted that they only stopped a boat “that had no hope of leaving their territorial waters – and only for the same passengers to board another one, the very next day.” Just 24 hours later, he repeated the process, this time in a successful, functioning boat.
Upon reaching open water, he witnessed something else notable: the smugglers themselves jumping ship to swim back in the direction they came. “In the course of a year-long investigation, here is what I have repeatedly observed: When migrants board dinghies, a number of smugglers and handlers initially go too, to check nobody unauthorised has sneaked on to the boat,” he explained. “As soon as they are satisfied that all is in order, they get off. If the dinghy is still in shallow water, they jump, pretending to be migrants who missed the boat. I have seen them feign exhaustion and hypothermia as they stagger ashore, to avoid being searched by police – only to skip off laughing the second the gendarmes look away.”
It was this phenomenon that led to the investigation’s second notable observation about French authorities.
“As we headed into the Channel, I watched in disbelief as men who were quite clearly in positions of authority on my dinghy radioed a lurking search-and-rescue vessel, asking to get off,” Drogan wrote. “Presumably knowing no lives were at risk, the emergency responders in turn called the gendarmes. A minute or two later, a police vessel drew alongside our dinghy and the traffickers hopped off. After a cursory pat-down for weapons, they were taken back to dry land. What a neat way to avoid a very lengthy round trip to the UK. If I could see what was going on, why on earth couldn’t these officials?”
🚨 SHOCK EXPOSÉ: British reporter sneaks onto migrant dinghy and catches French police GIVING FREE TAXI RIDES to people-smugglers back to their camps so they can keep flooding Britain!
— J Stewart (@triffic_stuff_) August 25, 2026
Christian Drogan spent weeks undercover in the lawless Calais camps, posing as a fugitive… https://t.co/KM0ny84nKK pic.twitter.com/JyzVNfp4Wr
Drogan went on to detail his boat being picked up by the British Border Force, where his true identity and purpose were revealed before long.
“I have nothing but praise for what I saw of UK Border Force, whose hands are tied by spineless leaders,” Drogan concluded. “Somehow, Andy Burnham, the Prime Minister, and Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary, still don’t see this for what it is: a national security emergency.”
Across the Western world, unrest has been brewing over liberal governments’ failures to control mass migration across their borders from third-world countries with radically different cultures and standards, leading to a slew of social ills, including increased crime, strained public services, security threats, and in some localities entire enclaves that have become unrecognizable and unsafe for natives.
Violent protests broke out across Belfast, Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Ayr earlier this summer after the attempted beheading of a Scottish man by a Sudanese national.
“I think it’s absolutely necessary to talk about immigration in the context of national security. I think it’s a conversation that has been raised by the US White House,” terrorism watchdog Jonathan Hall said in June. “At the moment, I haven’t yet heard a response, I’ve just heard silence.”