See more Daily Mail on Google - save us as a Preferred SourceBy DAVID BARRETT, HOME AFFAIRS EDITOR Published: 10:28 BST, 10 August 2026 | Updated: 10:40 BST, 10 August 2026
A migrant mega-dinghy with 230 people aboard reached Britain overnight, according to reports.It smashed the previous record for the largest number of migrants in a single dinghy – set just 17 days earlier with 165.The 230 arrivals are yet to be officially confirmed by the Home Office.But if the unofficial count – obtained by GB News – is accurate it would be more than the typical capacity of a Boeing 737 jet.People traffickers are currently thought to charge around £2,000 per head for illegal passage to Britain - meaning this single dinghy could have made them a staggeirng £450,000 profit.It comes after a Home Office source insisted on Friday that Labour’s plan to tackle the Channel crisis was ‘beginning to bear fruit’.The overnight arrivals meant more than 900 migrants reached Britain over the weekend.People traffickers' new mega dinghies are floating deathtraps and, at 42ft, are longer than a double-decker bus. Migrants board an overloaded dinghy off the coast of Equihen-Plage, France, on July 22Last week officials confirmed that traffickers are adapting their methods in a bid to circumvent Labour’s ‘smash the gangs’ strategy.On Sunday French police looked on as a baby and toddlers were carried aboard a dinghy to England.Dozens of migrants clambered aboard the boat in the waves off Camiers beach, south of Boulogne.The youngest hauled aboard was a baby who appeared to be just months old. There were a number of other young children and women, too, alongside mostly young men.Enhanced policing designed to block the traffickers – such as by seizing boats and outboard motors - has seen gangs ‘experiment’ with using mega dinghies on the Channel, they said.They are also deploying co-ordinated dinghy launches from a wider area of the French and Belgian coast in a bid to evade detection.
