Streets of Calais

Every night, across the narrow strip of sea that separates us from the continent, young men try to smuggle themselves into lorries about to board channel ferries.

The government has promised to cut illegal immigration by half: closing the Sangatte camp was supposed to help.

But the consequence has been to turn hundreds of people loose on the streets of Calais. And despite new British supplied detection machines for picking up stowaways - the signs are people are still getting though.

Robin Denselow reported.

ROBIN DENSELOW:
Four o'clock yesterday morning in the Calais docks, and the team working for the ferry company, P&O are searching for would be asylum seekers hiding away in the trucks. The companies would face a fine of £2000 per stowaway if they did not carry out the checks. The search teams have discovered over 2000 refugees so far this year. And that number is rising every night.

A man is found hiding in a cargo of larger cans.

LORRY DRIVER:
Someone checked it this morning down here, down the docks. In Calais IDS.

ROBIN DENSELOW:
Where did they get on, were you parked round the back of somewhere?

UNNAMED LORRY DRIVER:
In IDS, in the truck stop.

ROBIN DENSELOW:
And how did he get into your truck, do you think, whereabouts was it, do you think?

LORRY DRIVER:
In Calais, through the back doors. So easy to open.

ROBIN DENSELOW:
You just park up and they sneak in, and climb in.

LORRY DRIVER:
Yeah. Ridiculous.

ROBIN DENSELOW:
The police are called and he's taken away. One of 48 clandestines found by P&O so far this week. The police check the papers of the British lorry driver. To his surprise he's not questioned further about his unexpected cargo.

LORRY DRIVER:
Don't seem to be interested. Don't seem to want to know. Crazy.

ROBIN DENSELOW:
They didn't want to know how they got into the truck, what was going on?

LORRY DRIVER:
Don't want to know nothing.

ROBIN DENSELOW:
What's your view of the whole security here then?

LORRY DRIVER:
Crazy, waste of time, waste of time.

ROBIN DENSELOW:
You've been through one check before you got to here?

LORRY DRIVER:
One check before.

ROBIN DENSELOW:
The official check.

LORRY DRIVER:
Yeah.

ROBIN DENSELOW:
That did nothing, it didn't find the guy?

LORRY DRIVER:
Waste of time.

ROBIN DENSELOW:
Just ten minutes later as we're leaving the docks we find the stowaway walking back to the centre of Calais. He has been released to try again another night. He's an Iraqi Kurd from Sulaymaniya, possibly the most peaceful town in Iraq and speaks no English or French.

ROSS PETERS:
Managing Director, P&O Ferries
Regrettably, but as we predicted, the machinery that the British government, and therefore the British tax payer has paid for, just isn't working. That's either because the machinery isn't set up right or the people operating it, the Calais Chamber of Commerce are not operating it properly. Because our old fashioned check, or so its called, old fashioned, of CO2 detectors and physical checks of commercial and tourist vehicles, are taking place after the freight has been through the government-paid for checks. Yet Still this year we have discovered over 2000.

ROBIN DENSELOW:
At lunchtime yesterday, just a few hours later on we found our clandestine among the other asylum seekers in Calais. So why had the police simply released him?

PIERRE KIRCH
Chief Police Superintendent and Head of Regional Immigration Service
(Translation):
He was not freed in the way you think. He was removed from the port and his situation will be managed by us. Eventually he will either be sent to a reception centre or back to his own country.

ROBIN DENSELOW:
Calais is an easy-going little resort town that's dominated by it's docks. It survives on trade and these days that includes the British contingent who come here, attracted by the cut price alcohol.

Among this, there is now also the human trade of those hoping to be smuggled to Britain. Since the closure of the nearby Sangatte camp they live rough, sleeping out in the open, down by the beach or on waste land by the canal banks. Sangatte may have closed, but the would be asylum seekers are still arriving here in Calais, determined to move to England despite the tough new border controls. They're helped by the aggressive gangs who try to smuggle them across the Channel and by a curious loophole in the French law, by which many of those who have already been caught are able to stay here in Calais and try again, time after time.

The refugees refuse to be interviewed. Talking privately two men told us they were caught trying to get to England, but then released by the French police, just like the man we filmed. One said he'd applied for asylum in France, not because he wanted to stay but because it would give him protection from being jailed when he was caught trying to get to Britain, as he tried ten times already.

A young Iranian student allowed us to record his voice.

UNNAMED IRANIAN MAN:
They took he me to custody, and I was¿ they imprisoned me for seven, eight hours. No deportation, just I came back here.

ROBIN DENSELOW:
So if one of these clandestines has already asked for asylum in France they're simply released when they're seen trying to get on a boat.

PIERRE KIRCH (TRANSLATION):
The fact that he has asked for asylum gives him a particular status. It's true he's under our protection and must wait for the official response to his request.

ROBIN DENSELOW:
The refugees in Calais are a diverse, uneasy community. There are Iraqi Kurds, presumably economic migrants, and refugees from Sudan, including young girls and others from Afghanistan and Iran.

The French riot police, the CRS, keep a close watch when the refugees line up for their twice daily free meals, provided by a local charity. The would be migrants are helped by a group that includes anyone from the president of the yacht club through to driving instructors and an English lecturer.

STEPHEN BONES:
University of Calais
What we did was we set up two feeding points, one in afternoon as you can see, one in the evening. We try to provide medical care because we have some nurses who help us out. And if we can, obviously house some of them. Although it's illegal, because we are not aloud to do that, which is why two members are under investigation. We try to house as many of them as we can. The French Government pretend this situation doesn't exist, but as you can see the problem is still here.

MONIQUE DELANNOY
District nurse
(Translation):
They have all the problems children can have, and added to that they sleep outside. For a child, it is well known that you need a bath, a good bed and lots of love, then that child will be fine. They have their love but their parents have a lot of problems. I try not to think about the winter. Today is over and that's good enough. For them this winter is going to be terrible.

ROBIN DENSELOW:
Every night, a group of the Calais migrants try to make their break for England and sneak into the trucks parked up waiting to cross on the ferries. Just after dark, we found a group heading down a track by a railway line near one of the truck stops. A group of perhaps 20 or 30 were hiding out in a small wood. The traffic is organised by gangs who charge for their services, and in some cases we were told the truck drivers themselves were involved.

Here we saw a truck draw up flashing its lights towards us. There was the sound of shouting. The migrants, and it would seem the gang leaders, had seen that we were watching. He is approaching with a torch. One of them is approaching. As we were filming, a group of would-be asylum seekers came out of the woods and across the fields to attack us, following a man with a torch who appeared to be their leader. They hurled rocks at the car, smashing the window, and tried to stop our getaway.

This is becoming an increasingly violent business. For their part, the authorities are trying to do more to deter the stowaways. All trucks leaving Calais for the UK have to pass through either a heart-beat monitor or a form of X-ray, both provided and financed by the British Government but operated by the Calais Chamber of Commerce. These checks do find illegal immigrants, but by no means all of them. They don't discover those found by the second set of checks carried out by P&O. The cost to P&O is £1 million a year.

ROSS PETERS:
We have to do it because the people likely to get a fine were illegals to be found when they got to Dover. The people to be fined would be our customers and therefore our customers on the freight side would be less inclined to use us. So I feel almost between a rock and a hard place. I don't think we ought to be doing it, because I don't think it's P&O's job to police the coast of the United Kingdom, which we're doing, but I feel that, if we don't do it, our customers will perhaps get fined and therefore choose another route.

ROBIN DENSELOW:
It is, of course, impossible to say how many illegal immigrants are actually reaching Britain after these costly nightly hunts. But many of the 300 or so living in Calais tonight are trying time and time again, and some will surely get through.

This transcript was produced from the teletext subtitles that are generated live for Newsnight. It has been checked against the programme as broadcast, however Newsnight can accept no responsibility for any factual inaccuracies. We will be happy to correct serious errors.