In a hostel in northern France, the atmosphere was tense.

A father and his family were waiting for a call, a sign sea conditions were right and it is finally time to go. After fleeing from Kurdistan, they've paid around €8000 (£6,850) to cross the Channel on a dinghy provided by smugglers who value money over life.

"We don't have any other option except this dinghy. The surveillance for the trucks [crossing the Channel] is very strong and that is why we have to take this journey.

We will either die or succeed," Mohammed said ahead of the journey. To tell their story safely, all the family's names have been changed.

The UK wasn't their destination of choice; for years Germany was their home but then, after a failed asylum bid and threatened with deportation last month, they ran. If they stayed, Mohammed says they would have been sent back home where he fears he could be killed.

But after years of making friends and plans, overnight his family's lives changed. His teenage daughter Sara says when she was told they were leaving at first she didn't believe it.

"I was like, no, this is going to be a bad joke," she explains, "Then the day we left, I looked at my friends... they didn't know that I was leaving and we will never see each other again." Despite promises by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to "stop the boats.