Britain and France agree to guard Channel Tunnel from migrants with more police, higher fences and new cameras

Britain and France have announced tougher security tools to guard the Channel Tunnel, a new joint police command to target human traffickers and €10 million in new British government money to help asylum seekers and send others back home.

The measures are aimed at overcoming diplomatic and economic tensions around the French port of Calais, a flashpoint in a European summer marked by unusually large waves of migrants.

British Home Secretary Theresa May and French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve visited the tunnel and announced plans for a “substantial” increase of security guards, higher fences, surveillance cameras, floodlighting and infrared detection technology.

Since the start of June, at least 10 migrants have died trying to sneak through the Channel Tunnel to Britain. Countless others have slipped through undetected on trucks. Britain and France have accused each other of not doing enough to manage the migrants.

An estimated 3,000 migrants are camped in Calais with more arriving daily, drawing intense political attention in Britain. Elsewhere in Europe this year, Germany has seen 360,000 migrants arrive and 160,000 migrants have reached Greek shores.

May insisted on the importance of distinguishing between refugees fleeing war and repression and migrants coming illegally to seek better economic prospects.

“It’s a problem that starts elsewhere in the world with migrants trying to come abroad with organised criminal gangs,” she said Thursday.