Portsmouth anti-migrant protest blocks roads

Hundreds of anti-migrant demonstrators blocked roads in Portsmouth on Sunday night after asylum seekers arrived in the southern English city by small boat, prompting the UK Home Office to condemn what it called “intimidating and thuggish behaviour”.

Social media footage showed many demonstrators dressed in black with their faces covered, facing police officers with riot shields. Police had formed a cordon around buses waiting to take the asylum seekers to a processing centre. Officials said the migrants were successfully transported.

The Portsmouth protest followed a separate anti-migrant demonstration at the Port of Dover on Saturday, where masked men blocked access to the port.

French authorities earlier reported that a vessel carrying 140 people had departed Baie de Seine in Normandy and was heading for England's southern coast. Small-boat arrivals in Hampshire, where Portsmouth is located, are rare; boats more commonly arrive further east in Kent, where the Channel crossing is shorter.

Conservative lawmaker Joe Robertson wrote on X that the crossing so far west was “extremely concerning” and said authorities needed to establish whether new routes were being used by people smugglers.

The Home Office said 16,513 migrants had crossed the Channel in small boats since the start of the year. It said last week that crossings in August had fallen to their lowest level since records began in 2018, while migrant arrivals were also at their lowest number since 2020. Authorities have reported an increase in the number of passengers travelling per boat in recent months.