French cops found 26 immigrants on a lorry that was just about to board a ferry to Ireland, the Irish Daily Star reports.
Police said the migrants were found in the trailer of a lorry in the port of Cherbourg on Sunday morning — moments before it boarded the ferry to Ireland.
Border Police spokesman Hugues Toulliou said the migrants were uncovered by a specially trained sniffer dog that was part of a routine inspection of lorries heading for the ferry.
He also said the migrants were all in good health, despite being found hidden in the trailer, which was not refrigerated.
The officer also said cops were now focusing their investigation on how the migrants managed to get on board the trailer.
He added: “It is extremely rare to discover this amount of migrants in Cherbourg in a lorry.”
Sources in France said it was likely the migrants did not know the lorry was heading to Ireland.
But they also added that there has been an increase in the amount people trying to make it to Ireland in the last year — because of increased controls between France and Britain.
Security sources previously told The Star that they believe more migrants will try to get to Ireland — and then cross into the North and travel to Britain.
A source said: “Because of the nature of the border between north and south and the island of Ireland and Britain, it is inevitable that there will be some form of movement between both countries.
"That means it will be easier to get to the UK from Ireland than any other part of the EU and we will become more attractive to migrants.”
The Cherbourg migrants were all detained for 24 hours before being released and ordered out of the country.
In November of 2019, 16 migrants were found in the back of a truck trailer arriving from Cherbourg to Rosslare Europort.
