The picnic in the spring evening sunshine started on time. A smiling young man in a crisp apron served fresh baguettes, rice dishes and salad from a trestle table on the grass as indie music played. There was a party atmosphere.

Nearly 50 guests, sporting hoodies and beanie hats, appeared as if from nowhere on the dot of six o’clock and seemed delighted with the hospitality on offer. They had, after all, travelled a long way and their journey was far from over.

Yet the open-air picnic a few days ago was controversial. It was hosted by charity workers for hungry migrants at a secret location in Calais, the port in northern France just 22 miles from Dover where, until a few months ago, 6,000 waited to try to hide inside lorries on Channel ferry crossings to England.

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The Mail has discovered hundreds of illegals have returned to Calais and are sleeping rough on scrubland. They are being supported by charities giving them free food and clothing

Last autumn, the Calais ‘Jungle’ — a shanty camp built by migrants, with kebab shops, halal restaurants and even a brothel, church and mosque — was bulldozed by the French authorities, who dispatched its residents to 400 centres all over France, where they were offered tickets home or the chance to claim asylum.

Many evaded the authorities, however, and moved up the coast to another migrant camp at nearby Dunkirk.

This week a fire, caused by a turf war between Kurdish and Afghan people-smuggling gangs tore through the Dunkirk camp, which was run by the charity Doctors Without Borders. Some migrants were left with knife wounds — and 600 of them are missing.

Last month, mayor Natacha Bouchart tried to ban the ‘regular and persistent’ distribution of meals to migrants. She said it threatened the peace of the local people, but was overruled by senior judges

When the Jungle was pulled down, Calais townsfolk sighed with relief. ‘We hoped it was a fresh start for our lovely city after years of having migrants here,’ said one high-ranking local politician this week. ‘But they are coming back because England is still the magnet and Calais is the set-off point.’

The Mail has discovered that hundreds of illegals are now in Calais. Every week more arrive with hopes of getting to Britain, as they sleep rough on scrubland just a stone’s throw from the former Jungle.

They are being helped to survive by myriad English and French charity workers who dole out sleeping bags, fresh clothes and free food — largesse that has sparked a political backlash in Calais.

Last month, mayor Natacha Bouchart passed a decree banning the ‘regular and persistent’ distribution of meals to migrants, saying it threatened the peace and security of local people.

But she was overruled by senior judges in the region’s main city of Lille, who declared that under EU human rights laws it was ‘inhuman and degrading’ to deny migrants assistance.

It was, they decided in their wisdom, not charity handouts luring migrants to Calais but rather their desperate hope of getting to Britain.

Whatever the truth — and Mayor Bouchart may appeal against the Lille decision — Calais is returning to its old troubled self, with migrants on the seafront, the beaches, in woods and on port roads as they try to climb into the back of UK-bound lorries.

Police vans patrol 24 hours a day, trying to catch them and get them deported.

I talked to five young Eritreans as they marched over a road bridge overlooking the former Jungle camp at 7pm. Each was carrying a blue sleeping bag wrapped in polythene which, they said, had just been given to them by charity workers.

‘We lived in the Jungle for four months. When it was pulled down we were sent to live at a centre in the middle of France,’ said Merhawi, a 16-year-old who spoke good English.

‘We didn’t like it and it was not near England. We are back, and going to sleep under the trees tonight. Yes, it’s cold, but we can survive with the sleeping bags.’

Suddenly he cowered in the shadows as he heard a car coming. ‘We have to run now,’ he explained. ‘We don’t want the police to catch us and send us away again.’

With that, he and his friends strode on along the road before slipping through a hole in a wire fence marked with the word ‘private’ and leading to scrubland.

Merhawi has been here before but plenty of the new arrivals in Calais slipped into Europe only recently, being among the 20,000 to have reached Italy so far this year on traffickers’ boats from Libya. A British diplomat has just warned that more than a million more are in North Africa, waiting to follow them across the Mediterranean.

Calais is returning to its old troubled self, with migrants on the seafront, the beaches, in woods and on port roads as they try to climb into the back of UK-bound lorries. Pictured, lorry driver Peter, 27, shoos away a group of migrants looking at his truck

One of the arrivals drawn to Calais is Eritrean Gaitom Hatas, 18, whom I found lying in the sunshine with two friends on grass near the ferry port. He was waiting for a charity van to pull up and bring him some lunch of sandwiches and water.

Pulling his hoodie round his face nervously, he said: ‘We came from Libya on a boat to Italy in February, then got a bus via Paris to Calais. Every day and night we try to get to England. I have relatives in Liverpool and they expect I will arrive there soon.’

Gaitom looked thin and tired. ‘We couldn’t stay here without help,’ he said, as the van arrived with two volunteers on board.

‘The police try to throw us out, so we hide most of the time. We use text messages to arrange a time and place to meet the charity people for our food.’

When the Jungle camp was at its peak, 200 migrants a week were managing to reach Britain by smuggling themselves through the port of Calais.

The UK benefits system is one of the most generous in Europe, but a flourishing jobs black market allows those arriving illegally (and refusing to claim asylum to avoid the attention of immigration authorities) to earn cash to send to their families back home. It is a constant lure to migrants.

When the Jungle camp was at its peak, 200 migrants a week were managing to reach Britain by smuggling themselves through the port of Calais. Pictured, a group of migrants carrying new sleeping bags from charities

Christian Salome, head of the most respected of northern French charities, L’Auberge des Migrants, told me: ‘I think numbers in Calais have now reached 400 but more arrive all the time.

‘Many are sleeping rough not far from the former Jungle. We give out a lot of sleeping bags. We take their used ones back after two or three nights because they are so damp and dirty. We wash them and hand them fresh ones.’

I saw three Afghans begging for food at a huge charity warehouse on an industrial site on the outskirts of Calais. It contains food, clothes and sleeping essentials and is staffed by volunteers from England and France.

Proudly, the charity workers count the donated goods given away and post the total on a board outside the warehouse, with a message to migrants saying ‘Welcome. We love you for being here.’

It shows that 1,897 items were handed out in Calais in the fortnight up to March 20.

The hungry Afghans had emerged from woodland near the gates of the warehouse and, after shaking hands with a volunteer, left with chicken, rice and water, which they wolfed down as they sat on the pavement.

One of them, 18-year-old Arfan, said he was in France illegally, had relatives in Manchester and London and was trying to join them. When the police drove up, stopped and asked for his papers, he just laughed at them, saying: ‘None, none.’ Shaking their heads, the officers drove away.

Arfan and his friends obviously know Calais well. A few minutes later they walked into the Lidl supermarket next door to the charity warehouse and bought two cans of an energy drink and a carton of milk, nodding greetings to the checkout staff.

Under the Lille judges’ ruling, charities are meant to feed migrants in Calais only once a day. But their white vans criss-cross the town from morning till night and beyond, and they provide far more help than this.

Sue Jex, head of Britain’s Care4Calais, said recently that charities in the town had a duty to assist arriving migrants because they lived ‘in conditions far worse than when the Jungle existed’.

Yet in an increasingly febrile atmosphere, police play a cat-and-mouse game with migrants and charity volunteers. Officers have seized charity tents from over the heads of migrants sleeping rough, so they are forced to get up and move on.

A few weeks ago, a group in a field were tear-gassed by riot police as volunteers served them a free breakfast, according to a local charity called Utopia56.

The migrants’ free picnic on a Wednesday night was held right next to a lorry refuelling station, close to the port and the former Jungle but tucked away behind an industrial estate, out of sight of police patrols.

The charity worker in the crisp apron doling out food was helped by a group of female volunteers, one carrying a canvas bag marked with the words ‘Help Refugees’. The volunteers hugged the migrants, who hugged them back. There was air‑kissing and general camaraderie.

1,897 items were handed out in Calais in the fortnight up to March 20. The migrants’ free picnic on a Wednesday night was held right next to a lorry refuelling station, close to the port and the former Jungle

Among the guests were the Eritreans Merhawi and Gaitom whom I had already met. They sat on the grass listening to the music, eating heartily, laughing and chatting.

As darkness fell the party carried on, eventually breaking up after ten at night.

By then, of course, the guests had to be on their way. Nearby lorries were parked waiting for early-morning ferry crossings to Dover. Perhaps some drivers wouldn’t spot a stranger climbing in the back for an illegal journey to England?

Sure enough, I soon witnessed migrants trying to get into lorries close to the picnic site. One group, who later told us they were Eritreans, banged hopefully on the side of a Romanian-registered truck which was waiting to refuel at an unmanned diesel service station. The migrants ran back into the trees when they were spotted by us and heard by the driver in the cab.

In a frightening incident, a 27-year-old lorry driver called Peter, from Heysham, Lancashire, was stalked by migrants who crept out of the bushes (also near the picnic site) as he filled up his truck carrying cardboard sheets to England.

The four approached the back of the lorry while Peter was at the front. We watched them and shouted a warning to him.

As the migrants escaped, they turned to throw a rock at us for spoiling their chance.

Peter told us he filled up at the diesel stop because it was near the port: ‘Two weeks ago I was here when eight migrants got in the truck,’ he said. ‘I had to tell them I was going to Marseille, not the UK, before they got out.’

His ruse worked — but it won’t every time.

‘When they first shut the Jungle, the migrants disappeared,’ Peter said. ‘Now they are all over the place again. I’ll warn other drivers not to come here and that Calais is in trouble.’

The Road Haulage Association chief executive Richard Burnett has also sounded the alert, saying: ‘The Jungle camp might have disappeared but the issue of illegal immigration clearly hasn’t. These people will stop at nothing to get to the UK.

‘Fuel services are not policed, so they are the ideal place for them to break into vehicles. We’re worried it will be another summer of hell for lorry drivers.’

Munching his charity sandwich near the port, Gaitom, with his exhausted brown eyes, reinforced these fears. ‘We don’t come here only for the free food,’ he told me. ‘It’s because everyone knows this is the best place to find a lorry going to England.’