Horror moment mum forced to flee family home with her kids as migrants invade nearby woods

Caught in the firing line of this seemingly endless tide of unchecked humanity trying to get to Britain is Héloïse and her family – but like many French residents she has been afraid to speak up until now.

“I hope French people will read this, and it will help English people understand us, it’s not two problems, it’s the same. We don’t want them and you don’t want them,” she told the Daily Express speaking outside her farmhouse.

“Ordinary English people don’t get any help with this crisis, and we don’t get it either.”

The lack of help from authorities will be all-too familiar for a British public at the mercy of Labour plans to place thousands of migrants in former MoD sites close to rural villages and towns in the UK. Héloïse has had to invest in CCTV on the farmhouse after it was ransacked by migrants just weeks ago and “trashed” with disgusting used condoms left strewn on the floor.

On chilling footage caught by her cameras, hordes of migrants wearing life jackets can be seen streaming past her property to the beach just 500 yards away. But French police have told her unless they catch migrants in her property, or if they are aggressive or attack her, there is nothing they can do.

In recent weeks the beaches near coastal towns and villages in Hardelot, Berck-sur-Mer and Le Touquet have become favoured for migrant launches of so-called ‘mega dinghies’ carrying up to 230 migrants at a time.

Huge vessels measuring nearly 50ft enter the Channel from secluded launch sites and race along the coast to be pick up packs of waiting migrants who have been waiting in the woods and dunes until they get the signal.

A terrified French mother had to flee with her two young daughters from her farm after migrants invaded nearby woods seeking to find new beaches to launch small boats for Britain. In rare interview for British press, a resident living in France has given an exclusive insight into life for ordinary French people living on the front line of the migrant crisis.

Héloïse Longuet, 44, owns a beautiful three-century-old farmhouse in the pretty forested dunes near Hardelot beach, around 16 miles south of Boulogne. The stunning region is known as the Côte d’Opale, Opal Coast, because of iridescent sunset reflections bouncing off the English Channel.

Being just a short ferry or train journey from the UK makes the region hugely popular with British ex-pats, and the French love to vacation there too to escape baking summer heat down south.

But in recent weeks the riviera-like beauty of the region has been shattered by increasing migrant small boat launches – as the illegal immigrants and people traffickers head south to dodge French police crackdowns near Calais and Dunkirk. So called “mini camps” – smaller versions of the infamous now-destroyed Jungle migrant hellhole in the north – have been spreading like a fungus in forests up to 70 miles further south.

Struggling to hold her back her emotions, Héloïse recalls the terrifying moment she was walking in the pretty coastal woods with her daughters, Garance, aged 13, and Capucine, 10, on a route she used to love before the migrants arrived.

“It was just when they first started coming, and I told my daughters let’s go for a walk in the forest because it is really nice, but after a few minutes I could hear something crack, you hear it once you think it’s ok, but then it happened again and again a third time,” she explained.

“A few years ago, I would have thought nothing of it, but I could tell this time someone was near us, a deer does not follow you.

“I told my oldest daughter to dial the emergency line and keep the line open and we U-turned as fast as possible.

“I told her to hold her sister’s hand, and I held the other and I said whatever happens you ‘run, run, run’ if I fall. We don’t go in the woods anymore and I don’t go to the farm alone.

“I read the papers from England, and I hear this migrant raped a 12-year-old girl, this migrant did this to this woman.

“Those men were here in France, they could have been in the woods near my house, they just happened to find their prey in the UK.

“In France we don’t talk about this, the papers don’t talk about it, when there is a problem with migrants it’s as if we don’t speak about it, it doesn’t exist, but people are afraid.”

Garance said the experience in the woods made her feel “anxious” and “weird” as she did not if somebody was “around”.

She added it was “stressful” knowing the migrants were stopping her getting to the family farm. “It’s supposed to be our property but we are not free to come.”

Héloïse, who one day hopes to renovate the farm for her daughters, is now plagued by sleepless nights as migrants stream past her property. She has seen them light fires in nearby fields but again police said they could not act.

Although her insurance firm said they will cover any damage still, they also said because the farm is in a nature reserve, if it is burned down it cannot be rebuilt.

“The beach is the only place I can walk my dog without looking over my shoulder, I used to walk in the forest but not there are more migrants in there than animals,” she said.

“But I have been there too and, in a moment, suddenly hundreds of migrants appear and start running across the sand towards the sea for a waiting boat.”

The UK’s Border Security Command released footage today (Friday) of French Gendarmes clashing with migrants and puncturing an inflatable vessel with a knife on a beach in northern France.

Héloïse, who works in communications, added: “I think English people think French people don’t do anything, but I don’t think Gendarmes and policemen just here watch migrants leave on boats and go ‘ok great’.

“Their hands are tied because they can’t do anything, if they damage the boat trying to stop it, someone could be killed.”

Police patrolling France’s northern beaches have taken an increasingly proactive approach to blocking crossing attempts in recent months. French units have prevented 185 “small boat crossing events” in the three months after a new UK-France deal to stop the crossings began in April – defined as stopping launches, seizing equipment including boats, engines and lifejackets, and arresting smugglers.

Extra police units are active on French beaches including a 50-person riot squad. But smuggling gangs appear to have changed their tactics and started loading more people into single boats in recent times.

Earlier this month, a record 230 people made the journey in a single boat.

Some 15,897 migrants have crossed the Channel so far this year, down 43% on the same time last year, and an 18% drop from the same point in 2024.

Referencing the recent footage released of French forces clashing with migrants, UK Border Security Command’s Charlie Eastaugh said: “French officers are not shy in taking bold action to prevent these launches where it is safe and lawful to do so.

“They work in difficult and dangerous conditions to stop boats launching, seize equipment and disperse large migrant groups as well as saving thousands of lives at sea.”