Hundreds more migrants arrive in Britain with 1,300 small boat immigrants crossing Channel since Christmas Day

As GB News exclusively revealed at the beginning of the week, Border Force was on heightened alert for at least five days of small boats arrivals.

Four-hundred and seven made the illegal crossing on Boxing Day and 451 on Christmas day.

On Saturday so far, five small boats have crossed from France, with at least two hundred and fifty migrants on board.

They take the total number who have arrived in the UK this year to 36,500 - a 25 per cent increase on last year's total.

One senior Maritime source told GB news: “This is playing out exactly as we thought it would, people smugglers taking advantage of the good weather to launch as many small boats as possible before the New Year.

“We’re expecting the good weather to continue throughout today and Sunday and it might even be possible to launch boats on Monday.

“But just because the winds have died down doesn’t mean it’s safe out there.

"There’s thick fog in the channel at the moment and that’s extremely hazardous, as the big container ships and other vessels in the channel can’t see these tiny boats.

"These people smugglers are once again dicing with death But the ones taking the risks are the migrants not the smugglers.“

A Home Office spokesperson said: “We all want to end dangerous small boat crossings, which threaten lives and undermine our border security.

“The people-smuggling gangs do not care if the vulnerable people they exploit live or die, as long as they pay. We will stop at nothing to dismantle their business models and bring them to justice.”