A legal loophole stops officers intervening once a vessel is afloat. The Times visits a beach where police play cat and mouse with migrants trying to reach the UK
As dawn broke over the dunes at Gravelines, northeast of Calais, officers from the Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité, a special mobile French police force, were already on the beach.
Overhead, a surveillance plane circled, monitoring movement along the 3km stretch of beach and on the dune system behind it, which offers cover to smugglers and to asylum seekers trying to get past police to board boats.
