Activist Daniel Thomas Pleads Guilty to Criminal Damage Over Slashed Migrant Boat

Daniel Thomas, the 37-year-old British anti-illegal-immigration activist known online as Danny Tommo, pleaded guilty Thursday at Portsmouth Crown Court to criminal damage for slashing an inflatable migrant boat with a knife, the Associated Press and the BBC reported. He remains in custody and is due to be sentenced on Nov. 18.

GB News reported that Thomas had earlier pleaded not guilty before admitting the charge Thursday, and The Independent said the knife attack on the boat took place in the English Channel.

The incident took place on Sept. 22, when social media video showed Thomas cutting into the inflatable with a knife, according to the AP. No migrants were on the boat he damaged, but a member of a French rescue service was aboard at the time, the wire service reported.

The National Pulse, citing accounts given at earlier hearings, reported that Thomas cut the empty boat as a Frenchman climbed onto it from a rescue vessel, while migrants from another dinghy were being helped by Britain's RNLI lifeboat service, Border Force and the French Coastguard. That outlet placed the scene in the Solent off Gosport, on the Hampshire coast.

Thomas livestreamed the confrontation. "This is what needs to happen to everyone in these boats," he said, according to the AP.

Thomas appeared by video link from HMP Winchester, The National Pulse reported. Prosecutor Joel Smith accepted his guilty plea to criminal damage and asked that a second charge, refusing to give police the PIN to his phone, be left on file; Thomas has pleaded not guilty to that count.

Judge James Newton-Price said he would sentence Thomas without waiting for a pre-sentence report, noting he had already spent about seven weeks in custody, and raised a question about the maximum sentence available, according to the outlet. The National Pulse explained that under English law, damage worth 5,000 pounds or less is dealt with as a lower-level offense carrying up to three months in custody, while higher-value damage can bring up to 10 years; the boat's value has not been reported.

His barrister, Simon Pentol KC, has told the court that Thomas is a roofer and the main provider for his four children, The National Pulse reported. Courts twice refused him bail after his Sept. 23 arrest, despite defense offers that included GPS monitoring. After the arrest, several hundred supporters gathered outside a police station calling for his release, the AP reported.

Thomas founded a group called Patriot Platform and has taken a leading role in a new protest tactic of confronting police and rescuers to stop small boats from landing in England, according to the AP. The wire service described him as a longtime associate of activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, known as Tommy Robinson, and said protesters blocked the port of Dover in September and clashed with police in Portsmouth days later.

The government of Prime Minister Andy Burnham has condemned the conduct of anti-immigrant demonstrators and says closer police cooperation with France has cut Channel crossings this year by more than 40% compared with 2025, the AP reported. More than 41,000 people crossed last year, and Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has called the situation a crisis, the wire service said.

The frustration over illegal crossings is real on both sides of the Atlantic, but the case is a reminder that the strongest push for secure borders runs through the ballot box, Parliament and the courts, not confrontations at sea.