Authorities have poured in police – about 2,000 – to guard roadways, and built high barbed-wire fences to protect the Eurotunnel freight trains, the port and highway, but desperate migrants are using increasingly risky tactics to slow trucks and hitch a ride.
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“The security that we are putting in at the port is being stepped up with better equipment”, Goodwill said.
Local police said alternative routes had ensured minimal disruption to the flow of traffic to the ferry port on Monday. “It is up to them how they decide to secure their borders in Calais and around it”.
And Birmingham MP Jack Dromey compared the scheme to US Presidential candidate Donald Trump’s widely-criticised plan for a wall to separate the U.S. from Mexico.
Ms Rudd replied: “I couldn’t possibly comment on that”.
United Kingdom immigration minister Robert Goodwill said the wall was part of a package of joint British-French security measures worth £17 million ($22.8 million).
“We are going to start building this big, new wall as part of the £17m package we are doing with the French. We won’t move”, said demonstrator Raynald Roonis.
But Richard Burnett, chief executive of the Road Haulage Association, said efforts should instead be focused on security in the 5km leading up to the port.
The wall will be built in two sections on either side of a port approach road to protect the trucks from the migrants, who have used rocks, shopping carts and even tree trunks to try and stop the vehicles before climbing aboard.
Vikki Woodfine, of law firm DWF, who works with many hauliers who have been affected by Calais, said: “Whilst it’s encouraging that the Government is taking steps to address the situation in Calais, this wall isn’t the answer”.
“It is simply a knee-jerk reaction that is unlikely to make a difference in the long run – particularly since the route to the Calais port is already surrounded by fences and barbed wire”, she said, adding the “real problem” was a lack of policing.
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The wall in Calais was agreed following tens of thousands of attempted Channel crossings a year ago by migrants sneaking onto lorries boarding ferries and the Eurotunnel. We are telling our drivers not to stop within 150 miles of Calais so they are not targeted by migrants.
