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The Channel migrant crisis will get "a lot worse" as "vast numbers" of asylum seekers are pouring into Europe, Nigel Farage has warned. The Reform UK leader claimed groups are using ladders to scale barbed wire border fences.

And people are being offered up to £7,000 to drive migrants to Calais, exploiting Europe's Schengen Zone, Mr Farage revealed. Adverts are being shared on social media offering people "with their own car" opportunities to pick people up in Croatia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Greece. The Reform UK leader said: "This week, we go through 200,000 people who have crossed the English Channel alone, most of them undocumented young males, fighting age, who we know literally nothing about.

"They pose not just a great threat to women and girls but, I also believe, to our national security.

"It's happening again. There are now vast numbers crossing into the European Union, coming in through Bulgaria, coming in through Greece.

"Nearly all of the current people are coming from Iran and Iraq, and who knows what beliefs they hold.

"Now we see ladders scaling barbed wire fences, so all the evidence suggests vast numbers are coming into the European Union, and guess where they are heading?

"There are brazen adverts for drivers to pick people up from inside the European Union and to drive them to Calais. The number one destination for these young men is to get to the United Kingdom."

The Daily Express reported in March how smugglers are offering naïve students cash to drive Channel migrant dinghies to the French coast

Crime gangs are increasingly looking for people with "clean" records to transport the floating death traps from warehouses in Germany to launch points in northern France, intelligence has revealed.

They are offering "easy cash" and stuffing the equipment, including engines and lifejackets "floor to ceiling" in everyday cars because they are harder to track and check as they cross the border.

And the National Crime Agency believes a crackdown on the continent is forcing kingpins "to expand their reach to try and get more and more drivers involved".

Boat suppliers are compiling "go kits" - comprising an inflatable dinghy, engine, pump and life jackets - for smugglers, costing about £10,000.

Adam Berry, regional head of investigations (organised immigration crime), told the Daily Express: "In terms of the recruitment, it can be really difficult to try and work out who they are going to pick on next. We've had examples of students driving them, we've had other members of the Syrian and Kurdish communities.

"It really is difficult to pinpoint it. They are very rarely a key criminal associate. Much like any other courier, it is the lowest common denominator. They offer them cash - easy cash, and people take them up on that offer.

"There's no real pattern. It's really difficult to pick them. It's just a blend of just normal people that are happy to accept some quick cash to try and move this equipment."

Mr Berry told how these drivers are "detaching" themselves from the horrors in the Channel because they want the "easy money" without the risk of carrying drugs or guns.

Many migrants are crushed to death or suffocate in the wreckages of the dinghies when they explode in the middle of the world's busiest shipping lane.

Mr Berry said: "People know that drugs are illegal. Sometimes, naively, people are drawn into this as sort of easy money, and we have a bit of work to do to get that message out there.

"We do need to say to people and explain to people the risks of getting involved in it.

"Whereas, with drugs, everyone knows it is illegal. Drugs, guns, they know it. But with this, they could look in the back, and they can see a boat and an engine, and they don't see the danger that that presents.

"That is why we are so keen to stop it. We deal with deaths in the Channel. We deal with people losing their lives trying to cross in really substandard equipment.

"The vehicles are jam-packed. The boats are really big. It will have an engine in it. Pumps. It is literally floor to ceiling in the vehicle. They know and understand what they are doing.

"There's this detachment - I'm only transporting a boat. It's a detachment from the criminality."