France has deployed deadly tactics for years to prevent small boats from reaching its overseas territories, despite saying such combative intervention was illegal in the English Channel.
An investigation has uncovered that at least 24 people have died or disappeared at sea after lethal confrontations between migrant boats and French border police in the Indian Ocean.
The aggressive tactics were used by police trying to prevent the thousands of people who cross each year from Comoros, a volcanic island nation off the coast of East Africa, to nearby Mayotte, which has been a French territory for 182 years.
Security forces off the island have been deploying militant tactics such as ramming dinghies and circling them to make waves – violent manoeuvres considered illegal by the French government – according to an investigation by Lighthouse Reports in partnership with The Times.
The methods have led to the deaths of children and babies.
In the most recent incident in the Indian Ocean on July 15, two people were killed and seven others were reported missing.
Other migrants in the boat sustained life-threatening injuries, including a man who was struck by the propeller on a police boat and lost both his legs.
French officials are understood to have told Britain that similar aggressive action in the Channel would violate maritime law.
Migrants on a French Air and Border Police (PAF) boat after they were intercepted as they were sailing at night from Comoros to the French Indian Ocean island of Mayotte
A French police vessel passes lifejackets to migrants on a dinghy as they cross the English Channel on August 25, 2025 in Gravelines, France
The violent interception of small boats is ‘not legal but yes, probably happens’ in Mayotte, a French former minister told The Times.
‘The situation is completely different’, an anonymous official at the State Secretariat for Maritime Affairs said, explaining why France was able to take a ‘much more aggressive stance’ in Mayotte than in the Channel.
‘Mayotte is subject to constant migratory flows that destabilise the island. Necessity is the law. It’s a bit cynical, but that’s how it is. And then the media and political risk is incomparable. In Mayotte, if ten people die, nobody cares, it’s not news,’ he said.
Because small boats in the Channel tend to carry more migrants at a time, violent collisions between dinghies and police could result in the death of hundreds of passengers.
However, France is understood to be working on its legal framework to allow similar at-sea pushbacks to occurr in the Channel.
It comes after Labour’s ‘one-in, one-out’ deal was plunged into chaos on Tuesday night, after the High Court blocked ministers from sending a small-boat migrant back to France.
The ruling is likely to pave the way for others at risk of deportation to bring copycat claims, leaving Labour’s returns deal with France in legal limbo for months.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said Sir Keir Starmer’s plan to reduce the number of migrant crossings was now ‘clearly dead’.
A man gestures from a migrant dinghy as it prepares to sail into the English Channel on July 10, 2025 in Gravelines, France
Some French politcians oppose the implementation of the aggressive tactics in the Channel, which could include intercepting boats at sea, and on inland waterways where smugglers launch taxi boats.
In 2024, the then French Secretary of State for the Sea, Hervé Berville, described the tactics as ‘ineffective and even dangerous’ in a letter to former French prime minister Gabriel Attal.
He suggested the aggressive methods should be ‘ruled out because of the risks it poses to sailors/operators (violence against them) but also to migrants (risk of drowning in large numbers)’.
But in Mayotte, French authorities make no secret of the tactics they use against the kwassas – the local term for the small boats.
In a post on LinkedIn by local enforcement officers, a police speedboat can be seen whizzing through the water and circling other boats to create dangerous and disruptive waves.
The tactics used by the French police have led to several deaths over the years, with the first recorded fatality in 2007. In 2021 officers found ten migrants drowned in one place.
Nevertheless, the number of migrants making the perilous journey have not decreased.
In 2019, migrant Farid Djassadi lost both his legs after he was thrown overboard when a police boat collided with the small boat he was in.
A court later ruled that the boat’s engine exceeded legal limits and that none of the officers on board had completed sufficient training to drive it.
The survivors of the most recent fatal collision in the Indian Ocean said officers deliberately caused the kwassa to sink by making waves and ramming it directly.
Zoubert, 25, one of the survivors, said he witnessed a pregnant woman drown.
‘The boat ripped apart and everyone fell into the water,’ he said.
‘There were three babies; everyone was screaming. We saw people die.’
Another survivor, Amahada, said: ‘The [police] turned on their light, they saw us, they caused waves around our boat, they went to position themselves far away and then at full speed, they ran into us.
‘Our boat crashed, we screamed in panic. We were all in the water, there were dead and missing people … they went and positioned themselves far away and watched us die.’
