French Cops Go Full Action Movie: Jet Skis and Underwater Nets to Stop Channel Crossings

By HOAR Team 5 July, 2025 4 mins read 85 Views

Well, this is new.

French police have been secretly deploying jet skis to lay nets in the English Channel, targeting migrant dinghies before they reach British waters. The nets jam the boat propellers and force them to stop in shallow water - basically turning border patrol into some kind of maritime chess game. I watched footage of this last week and honestly? It looks like something out of a Bond film, except with way more bureaucracy involved.

The whole thing was part of a trial run that also saw officers wading into the water with knives to puncture boat hulls on Friday. (Yes, you read that right - cops with knives in the Channel. What could go wrong?)

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Macron's Big Reveal

This timing isn't coincidental. French President Emmanuel Macron lands in the UK this week for a state visit, and he's planning to announce these new "shallow water intervention" strategies at a summit with Sir Keir Starmer on Thursday. The whole jet ski operation will supposedly become routine within weeks - imagine putting that on your CV: "Professional boat-stopper, Channel division."

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper tried to sound tough about it: "We need to stop at nothing to boost our border security." But honestly, when you're resorting to underwater nets and jet ski chases, you've probably already stopped at quite a lot.

The Tories Tried This Before (Sort Of)

Here's the thing - the Conservatives floated the jet ski idea back in 2021. Their plan was to intercept boats in British waters and literally spin them back toward France. Health and safety killed that one pretty quickly, which... fair enough. Spinning boats full of people in the middle of the Channel sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen.

But get this - the rejected ideas from previous years include wave machines, a floating "wall" in the Channel, and moving migrants to decommissioned oil platforms. I'm not making this up. Someone actually sat in a meeting and said "what about oil platforms?" and apparently nobody laughed them out of the room.

The Numbers Game

The pressure's mounting because over 20,000 people have arrived by small boat this year alone. That's despite the UK handing France £500 million to curb crossings. At this point, we're basically paying for the most expensive game of whack-a-mole in history.

Cooper's also looking at cracking down on illegal work after the French blamed the UK's black market economy for attracting migrants in the first place. Which is rich, considering we've known about the cash-in-hand problem for years but apparently needed the French to point it out.

One In, One Out?

There's talk of a "one in, one out" scheme being hammered out before Macron arrives - Channel migrants sent back to France in exchange for asylum seekers with UK family connections. It's like a prisoner swap, except with more paperwork and probably worse coffee.

The irony? Despite all these dramatic new tactics this week, boats are still setting sail for Dover. Because apparently criminal gangs aren't easily deterred by jet skis and underwater nets. Who would have thought?

Look, I get it - something needs to be done about the crossings. But watching French cops chase dinghies on jet skis while laying nets like some kind of maritime fishing expedition just feels... I don't know. Desperate? Like we're one step away from training dolphins to patrol the Channel.

Maybe that's next year's big announcement.

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