This week, the Government went full throttle on the much-talked-about migrant returns deal with France.
In the space of just 24 hours, we had the announcement the treaty had been operationalised, followed by the first small boat migrants detained and facing the prospect of a return to France in the coming weeks.
This rapid move from announcement to detention was intended as a clear message to the people smugglers that those they send across risk being sent straight back again.
I say straight back again more metaphorically than in actual practice.
Any return will take weeks at best.
After London informs Paris of the cohort it intends to return, France has two weeks to respond.
If they object to any of the proposed returnees, they can veto the move to send them back.
GB NEWS
|Mark White gives his analysis on the migrant deal with France
Then there's the spectre of legal challenges.
The human rights lawyers, charities and pro-migrant activists are supremely talented when it comes to finding the loopholes within human rights legislation to ensure those they represent have the best chance of resisting attempts to remove them.
The previous Government knows to its cost how those lawyers and activists bogged down the planned Rwanda scheme, not for months but for years.
There's no doubt those human rights warriors will be back into bat for those the current Government selects for return to France.
Sir Keir Starmer and his ministers like to trumpet this deal as a one-in-one-out treaty.
It's nothing of the sort, not even close.
It's vast majority of small boat migrants in, a handful out.
PA
|The deal won't be the one-in-one-out treaty trumpeted by Sir Keir Starmer, Mark White says
The Government is being deliberately coy on the numbers involved, only acknowledging that those numbers will be 'modest' to begin with.
The reason for the lack of candour is obvious.
The public messaging needs to show the Home Office is taking a tough stance on small boat arrivals.
The suggested 50 returns a week would clearly look embarrassing on a busy week in the Channel, where well over a thousand can easily arrive in just a day or two.
Also, ministers don't want to publicly state that 50 migrants are to be returned, only to find that several weeks down the road, they've barely managed to return half a dozen.
And then there's also the business of trying to keep the people smugglers and their customers guessing.
PA
|Total migrant crossings by year
Sowing the seed of doubt around the risk of being returned, the Government hopes, might just be enough to disrupt the business model of this criminal enterprise.
So far at least, the people smugglers have not got the memo.
In just 24 hours after the returns deal was operationalised, almost four hundred migrants made the illegal crossing.
On Thursday evening, despite atrocious conditions in the Channel, the people smugglers decided to launch another migrant boat from the coastline near Dunkirk.
Two lifeboats and a Border Force vessel were needed to assist and oversee as the migrants were taken onboard the Border Force vessel in heavy swells.
Our producer Chris, in his trusty position on the cliff tops overlooking Dover harbour, filmed as the lifeboats and Border Force were bounced around on the waves.
Back in harbour, he counted 83 migrants who had been crammed on that flimsy inflatable raft.
It was another reckless move by the people smugglers, who care little for the migrants who pay for their services.
But it was also a defiant gesture to the British and French governments.
A signal that whatever deal they might hatch, for the criminal gangs, it's business as usual.