CALAIS, France — France deployed more than 100 riot police to Calais on Wednesday to bolster security as hundreds of migrants have been trying night after night to rush the railway tunnel leading to England — at times with fatal consequences.
One migrant was crushed to death and another was critically injured after being shocked in Paris amid tens of thousands of attempts to breach security that have fueled a growing sense of crisis on the Channel this year. Undeterred, dozens of men and women kept coming as night fell, some hiding their faces beneath bandannas as they walked single file to sneak over a bent fence along the tracks.
The 30-mile Channel Tunnel is used by passenger trains and freight services to connect France and Britain.
Migrants pressing northward toward both countries are fleeing war, dictatorship and poverty in Africa and the Middle East. They tend to spend as little time as possible in their southern European landing spots, like Italy, where two ships unloaded on Wednesday, one carrying 435 passengers and 14 bodies and another with 692 migrants.
British officials have increasingly sounded the alarm over a potential influx of foreigners. French officials, meanwhile, are concerned about the roughly 3,000 migrants in encampments called “the jungle” by the inhabitants of the largely lawless sites scattered haphazardly in the area.
It’s not clear how many ever reach Britain, although at least a few succeeded this week in stowing aboard trains to make the 35-minute trip. Others were led away in the darkness, including a small group retrieved from a ditch by a single watchman wielding little more than a flashlight.
France dispatched 120 riot police immediately to Calais to bolster security that British authorities complain has been lax. France’s government, meanwhile, called on Eurotunnel, the company that operates the tunnel, to step up its protection of the sensitive site.
By Wednesday night, a police helicopter hovered overhead and gendarmes in flak jackets turned back about two dozen.
Those caught on the French side are generally immediately freed to return to the camps and try again. Those caught on the British side may be detained while their applications for asylum are considered. But many stay hidden aboard trucks as they roll off the trains until they stop for fuel, then hop off and vanish.
“Smugglers sell migrants the notion that Britain is the only El Dorado for a better life,” said Emmanuel Agrius, the deputy mayor of Calais.
Eurotunnel defended its efforts, saying Wednesday it had blocked more than 37,000 attempts since January. Nine people have died trying since June, including the man crushed by a truck. An Egyptian trying to leap from a train roof and board the Eurostar at Paris’ Gare du Nord train station was in critical condition after being shocked.
There were wildly conflicting totals of people involved in Wednesday’s rush for the tunnel, ranging from 150 to as many as 1,200. But French authorities and the company agreed there had been about 2,000 attempts on each of two successive nights.
