Over 1,000 Hijabs Handed to Channel Migrants This Year, Total Heading for 1,500
October 5, 2026 · Frisian News
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Home Office documents show 974 hijabs were given to small-boat arrivals between January and June 2026, at a rate of 162 a month. The total has passed 1,000 and is on track for 1,500 by year's end, contradicting ministers' claims that irregular-entry costs are under control.
Between January and June this year, Home Office documents show, officials handed 974 hijabs to migrants who crossed the Channel illegally, at a rate of 162 per month. The total has since passed 1,000. At the current pace, internal government figures reviewed by The Mail on Sunday show it is likely to be close to 1,500 by now.
The government's explanation is that it has a legal duty, under the Short-term Holding Facility Rules first written by the Conservative government in 2018 and last revised under Rishi Sunak, to supply basic clothing including cultural and religious items. A Home Office spokesman told The Mail on Sunday: "All arrivals receive a basic dry clothing pack where required. The items available form part of standard welfare arrangements."
The wider clothing figures put the hijab count in context. Home Office procurement data reviewed by The Mail on Sunday show 15,406 packs distributed in total: 10,694 for men, just 2,670 for women, 773 for boys and 829 for girls. The list also includes 572 beanie hats and 350 babygrows. The lopsided sex split reflects what the government's own statistics confirm: the majority of small-boat arrivals are male.
More than 19,000 small-boat crossings have been attempted so far this year, The Mail on Sunday reports, down 42 per cent on the same period in 2025. Oxford University's Migration Observatory puts the broader trend at roughly 36,000 arrivals by small boat in the year to May 2026, 13 per cent below the same window a year earlier. There were 41,000 in full-year 2025, more than any year except 2022's 45,000.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp was direct. "The Government must stop handing out hijabs to illegal immigrants immediately," he told The Mail on Sunday. "It's an insult to hard-working British taxpayers that they're funding religious items for people who have broken into our country. It should not be for us to fund someone else's religious practices." Shadow Education Secretary Laura Trott added that she did not believe "the state should be party to an instrument of female suppression."
The timing sharpened the political edge. On the Friday before publication, two Iranian nationals who had arrived in Britain on small boats were charged with planning a terrorist attack targeting Manchester's Jewish community during Yom Kippur, The Mail on Sunday reported. Prime Minister Andy Burnham has argued that Brexit weakened Britain's ability to stop the crossings because the country can no longer achieve "the same levels of collaboration" it had before.
The legal framing the Home Office offers is not without a certain irony. The rules it cites were drawn up and amended by the same Conservative politicians who now call the expenditure an insult to taxpayers. What has changed is the scale. At 162 hijabs a month, the annual total will sit near 1,500 even if crossings slow further. The government can point to a statute. It cannot point to a debate that was ever held in public about whether that statute should cover this item.
The number is 1,500, headed there without a vote.
Published October 5, 2026 · Frisian News