Border officials in the UK and France have welcomed a "really significant" drop in the number of migrants crossing the English Channel this year in small boats, reports BBC News.
Official figures are down by over a third compared with 2022.
The UK has helped to fund a doubling of French police patrolling the border along with other measures like drones.
But tens of thousands of migrants remain ready to attempt the dangerous journey.
On a cold, moonless night in December, a 17-year-old Iraqi girl named Faisa lay hidden in the sand dunes outside the port of Boulogne, clutching her 10-year-old sister's hand, listening to the steady roar of the sea, and waiting for the order to run.
"I was not scared because everything for us is a risk," she explained later.
It was a little after two in the morning, and the tide was beginning to turn.
The smugglers organising that night's crossing for this particular group of about 50 migrants from Iraq, Afghanistan, Eritrea, and Iran had waited for more than a week to get the timing right. A lull in the winter winds. Calmer seas. Favourable currents off the French coast.
And now, if possible, a short dash over the sandy beach before the tide raced out and left them with hundreds of metres to cross to reach the sea.
The wind was picking up. In a small village further up the beach, Christmas lights glimmered in the dark.
Out in the Channel, the bright lights of a few anchored cargo ships sparkled, and behind them, to the north-west, a faint glow seemed to indicate the floodlights at Dover's busy port, reflecting off its famous white cliffs.
"Go, go, go."
As Faisa, her parents and three siblings reacted to the whispered order and slipped down the steep dunes, similar sprints were taking place, at intervals, along 150km (93 miles) of French coastline.
Despite the bitter cold and the occasional gust of drizzle, this was perhaps the last decent chance, of the year and maybe even of the entire winter, to attempt an illegal crossing.
Hundreds of young men and a handful of women and children began dragging inflatable boats and outboard motors down past big, silhouetted rocks and the dark outlines of ruined World War Two German gun emplacements and on across the tide-rippled sands towards the sea.
"Did you see that light?"
In their sector on a long beach near Boulogne, four French gendarmes, masked and wearing green camouflage uniforms, stopped their foot patrol.