CALAIS, France – Mohammad and Jaber spend their days waiting for the right truck, and it could be the right time this afternoon.

This truck inspires your confidence. They yell at their friend to jump. Run, grab the truck between the cab and the trailer and hide. The truck does not stop, which means that the driver did not see anything.

The truck and its stowaway travel on a French motorway, towards the English Channel, and the man’s friends wait for him to reach his destination: the United Kingdom.

Mohammad and Jaber are young Sudanese refugees who escaped the war at home, suffered abuse in Libya and survived the deadly crossing from the Mediterranean to Italy. They are now in Calais, in northern France. Like hundreds of other refugees who have arrived mainly from East Africa and the Middle East, they hope to reach the UK by hiding in trucks, a dangerous and life-threatening strategy.

Politicians on both sides of the Canal argue about the best way to stop them. Thousands of people have arrived in the UK in recent months, by truck or otherwise, fueling anti-immigrant rhetoric.

While those with the cash may arrive in the UK on fragile and overloaded ships, those without it must climb aboard one of the thousands of commercial trucks that leave France for the UK every day.

Several of the Calais immigrants want to go to the UK to improve their situation or to reunite with relatives. French officials also refer to British rules that are very permissive towards undocumented immigrants.

Only young, healthy and solo migrants dare to try to get on trucks. It is a collective effort.

On a cold autumn day this week, five young people were watching trucks leaving a warehouse. A sixth was hidden along the way.

When a promising truck arrived, they yelled at it to get on board.

Truckers are monitoring that no one is hiding in their vehicle, or stopping to warn potential stowaways that they will not be heading to the UK. Police officers frequently patrol, blasting sirens, to discourage young people.

Once on board, the migrants carefully observe the route followed by the driver. Only a precise sequence of left and right turns will lead you towards the English Channel. If the sequence is wrong, they descend and start over.

Mohammad managed to sneak into a truck twice, but had to jump when he realized he was not going to the UK.

Some hide between the cab and the trailer. Others camouflage themselves among the merchandise, if they manage to open the doors.

And even if the truck is heading in the right direction, the stowaways are not out of the woods. Police officers use sophisticated equipment at the entrance to the Channel Tunnel to examine trucks for body heat or moving shadows. If the stowaways are caught, the police kick them out of the trucks. More than 18,000 people were found in the trucks last year and 11,000 since the beginning of the year.

Migrant rights groups and human rights activists say they receive calls from migrants trapped in refrigerated trucks who suffocate or nearly freeze to death. Some claim to have been intimidated by the police after being discovered.

Some sustain fractures or even more serious injuries while attempting to jump aboard moving trucks. At the end of September, a 20-year-old Yasser Abdallah was crushed to death.

He had also fled Sudan. He dreamed of driving a taxi in the UK. More than 300 migrants paid tribute to him in Calais a week after his death.

The refugees accuse the truckers of suddenly accelerating and braking and rocking their vehicle to bring them down. That doesn’t stop them from trying.

At night they sleep in the forest around Calais, in a tent if they are lucky, but usually under a tree. Police visit the camps every morning, sometimes making violent arrests and confiscating their property, according to human rights activists.

“Some stay here for a day, some for a week, some for a month, I for four months and 15 days,” Mohammad said. He and his friends say that two or three people manage to get on a truck to the UK every day.

Ahmad, a 28-year-old Sudanese who left his country in 2018, shows a video on TikTok. The images are dated the day after Yasser’s death and are from the account of someone who survived.

The video shows a man running alongside a blue and white truck and getting into it.

Arabic text, the British flag and two letters cover the images: UK.