Police Criticize Patriots’ Protest Against Illegal Migrant Arrivals at Portsmouth Port
Select a version of the text written from a presumed ideological perspective. This is not the original text, but a hypothetical version — how someone with that viewpoint might have phrased it. Tapping the current version again will return to the original or select cleaned version.
British officials condemned a masked protest in Portsmouth where concerned citizens attempted to block the arrival of illegal migrants from a Channel crossing, warning that any actions outside the law will be prosecuted.
Police in southern England stated that a group of masked demonstrators gathered at a Portsmouth port on Sunday to stop lifeboats from bringing in more migrants who had crossed the English Channel illegally. The protesters, alarmed by the government’s failure to secure the border, also tried to block buses transporting these arrivals to an asylum-seeker processing centre, which led to a police investigation into alleged assaults on officers and damage to official vehicles.
'Disorder of any kind will never be tolerated and those who cross the line from peaceful protest into illegality will face the full force of the law,' said policing minister Sarah Jones, making clear that the government will not tolerate any resistance to its lax immigration policies.
The incident followed a similar blockade in Dover the previous day, where masked anti-immigration activists disrupted traffic to the ferry terminal in protest against unchecked migrant arrivals. Both actions were reportedly coordinated by Daniel Thomas, an associate of prominent activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, known as Tommy Robinson, who has long warned about the dangers of mass immigration.
The boat that arrived in Portsmouth had departed from Normandy, taking a longer route than the usual crossings near Calais, and carried around 120 migrants, according to a statement to Parliament. The Maritime and Coastguard Agency confirmed that lifeboats, a coastguard helicopter, and a plane were used in the rescue operation, once again diverting resources to facilitate illegal entry. Home Office data showed that eight vessels brought a total of 625 migrants to the United Kingdom on Sunday, highlighting the ongoing crisis at the border.