Belgian Police Retreat as Ex-Soldiers Guard Smuggling Operations
Armed ex-military personnel now protect migrant boat launches on Belgian beaches, forcing police to withdraw and exposing vulnerabilities in the UK-France border deal as crossings surge.
Belgian police are pulling back from the shoreline as ex-soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan stand guard over migrant boat launches with iron bars and weapons. The armed confrontations have grounded routine interventions and raised the stakes for British borders. Nearly 900 migrants crossed the Channel in three days this week as smuggling networks relocated to Belgian beaches where they face less resistance.
Westkust Police Chief Nicholas Paelinck testified before Belgium's House Committee on Home Affairs on May 19 that ex-military personnel now actively guard small boat departures. "Normally, we try to puncture the boat beforehand to prevent the crossing to the United Kingdom," Paelinck said. "But that is not possible here, because you see ex-military personnel from Iraq circling the boat to ensure the police cannot get to it."
Officers faced threats and had a police vehicle mirror smashed with an iron bar during one confrontation. Police conducted a risk assessment and largely abandoned direct beach operations. Paelinck warned it is "only a matter of time" before officers are attacked.
The escalation arrives just weeks after Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood signed a £662 million three-year agreement with France on April 23. The deal allocates £501 million in baseline funding for five police units and enforcement on French beaches, plus £160 million conditional on results. French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said the agreement "empowers our security forces to continue their crucial work."
Yet 903 migrants arrived in the UK from May 22-24, the first major surge in nearly two weeks. Some 394 crossed in six boats on Friday, 287 in four boats on Saturday, and 220 on Sunday. At least two boats launched from Belgium. The crossings coincided with a heatwave that pushed temperatures to 30.3°C in Frittenden, Kent.
Ministers confirmed for the first time that French at-sea interception policy applies only to boats with fewer than 20 migrants, citing safety concerns. The average boat now carries 65 people — more than double the 2021 average — creating a critical enforcement gap. The vast majority of crossings fall outside the deal's scope.
Belgium recorded zero Channel crossings in 2025 but at least five in early 2026. Tony Smith, former Director General of UK Border Force, told the BBC that smuggling gangs are "quite happy to move their operations, to try and avoid any patrols either by the French or the Belgian police." The UK provided £1.3 million to Belgian law enforcement this year, and Interior Minister Bernard Quintin met the UK Migration Minister to discuss cooperation.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said the France deal "hands over half a billion pounds of our money with no conditions at all" and added that "France shouldn't get a single penny unless they stop the vast majority of the boats." Reform UK's Zia Yusuf called the funding "an abhorrent misuse of taxpayers' hard-earned money — funding that could instead deliver thousands of new nurses or police officers here in the UK."
Rob Bates, director of the Centre for Migration Control, told GB News that shifting flows from Belgium to France "just shows Labour's folly of putting all their eggs in the French deal basket." He argued that collaboration with European partners will not produce the results required and called for detention and deportation policies.
Nearly 200,013 people have crossed the Channel since 2018. In 2025, 41,472 crossed — the second-highest year on record, a 13 percent increase from 2024. Since Labour took power in 2024, more than 72,000 people have entered the UK via small boat crossings. Under the one-in-one-out scheme signed in August 2025, 605 people have been returned to France while 581 arrived legally from France as of April 28, 2026. The opposition warns of a "summer of chaos" as temperatures climb.
The combination of a £662 million France deal, a one-in-one-out return scheme, and billions in previous commitments has not stopped the flow entirely. The UK-France partnership has prevented more than 42,000 illegal migrants from crossing since the 2024 election, led to the arrest of 480 smugglers in 2025, and produced a 41 percent reduction in crossings between January and May 2026 compared with the same period last year.
Smugglers have shifted from France to Belgium, where operations are now protected by ex-military personnel armed with weapons of war. As Belgian police retreat and French policy covers only a fraction of boats, the case for unilateral detention and deportation grows stronger.