This is the moment an illegal migrant was arrested after hiding in a couple’s camper and trying to climb out on the M25.
Paul and Kerry Turton were returning from holiday when the man forced his way into a locked storage cupboard at Calais.
On Monday afternoon as the couple were driving home to Beeston in Nottinghamshire on the motorway they noticed him trying to open the door.
In the footage, Kerry can be heard on the phone to police as officers raced to intercept them at South Mimms services at Junction 23 of the M25.
At one point Kerry says: ‘He’s opening the door… he’s getting out.
‘I’m being quite brave but I’ll probably have a nervous breakdown in a minute.
‘We’ve come from Calais, we checked and double checked and we can’t understand how he’s done it.’
Officers from Hertfordshire Constabulary surrounded the camper at a remote part of the service station and the 18-year-old man was arrested and handed over to immigration officials.
Paul posted footage of the incident on Facebook on Monday commenting ‘not the best way to end a great holiday but a lesson has been learned’
Kerry added: ‘We were driving along and heard a knocking sound and I checked everywhere to see what it was, I sat back down and Paul saw through my wing mirror a hand opening the back garage door and knocking for us to stop and let him out.
‘We rang the police who arranged for a car to escort us so they could arrest him.
‘We had checked and double checked the doors were locked before we left Calais so god know how he got in.’
A Hertfordshire Constabulary spokesman told : ‘Police were called at 4.18pm on Monday (18 August), following reports from a driver and passenger that they had a suspected clandestine entrant in their motorhome.
‘At the time of the call, the vehicle was travelling down the M25 between junctions 28 and 27 (Essex).
‘The vehicle was told by the police call handler to stop in South Mimms. An 18-year-old man was taken to hospital to check his health and welfare before being arrested by officers.’
‘The case has been transferred to Immigration Services, as per usual policy.’
Figures last week revealed more than 50,000 migrants have crossed the channel in small boats since Sir Keir Starmer became prime minister.
Sir Keir – who won power promising to ‘smash the gangs’ facilitating the crossings – reached the unwanted landmark faster than his predecessors, in 402 days.
Rishi Sunak was in office for 603 days when he hit 50,000.
It took some 1,066 days under Boris Johnson although much of that time was during Covid lockdowns.
Despite locking the compartment before setting off, reporting the incident and cooperating with the police to ensure he was detained, Mr and Mrs Turton may still be fined for carrying the unnamed man into the UK.
Earlier this year another couple were fined £1,500 after a migrant hid on their motorhome and was not spotted by border force.
Adrian and Joanne Fenton said they called police when they found the person zipped inside the cover of a bike rack at their home in Heybridge, Essex, in October.
They later received a fine from the Home Office for failing to ‘check that no clandestine entrant was concealed’ in the motorhome when they returned from Calais on October 15.
The Home Office said penalties were ‘designed to target negligence rather than criminality’.
But after the couple appealed and following public outrage and widespread media coverage the fine was cancelled.
Mrs Fenton said she was ‘ecstatic’ about the Home Office’s change of heart but the couple remained concerned about others who might be hit with a similar penalty.
‘How many more people are going to get caught out exactly the same?’ she said.
Mr Fenton said the Home Office should ‘be looking at their policy and make sure that it’s fit for purpose and not targeting holidaymakers’.