A far-right activist known for organizing anti-immigrant rallies in Britain was arrested on Wednesday after he shared a video of himself slashing an inflatable dinghy in the English Channel while a person was on board.
A British police force, the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary, said in a statement that it had arrested a 37-year-old man. It did not further identify him, in line with British policing rules on not naming suspects who have not been charged.
But the man, Daniel Thomas, streamed a video on YouTube on Wednesday evening that appeared to show the arrest, at a gas station.
In a statement on Thursday, the police force said it had arrested the man on suspicion of several crimes, including destroying a ship or endangering its safety, and of criminal damage with intent to endanger life.
The arrest came after Mr. Thomas, who uses the name Danny Tommo, shared a video of himself in the English Channel pursuing a boat carrying migrants from France to Britain.
Mr. Thomas has espoused extremist views against migration and urged his followers to rally at ports and other sites housing newly arrived asylum seekers. In 2016, he was sentenced to two years in custody for an attempted kidnapping.
In June, Mr. Thomas said he had started a group, Patriot Platform, to channel anti-migration sentiment. He has claimed credit for recruiting protesters to gather recently in Dover and Portsmouth, where hundreds of masked men dressed in black blocked roads and chanted “Stop the boats!”
This month, Britain’s home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, described Mr. Thomas as an “outright racist.”
In the video filmed at sea, Mr. Thomas could be heard saying, “You’re on English territory. This is England,” before slashing the dinghy with a blade. No migrants were on the boat, but an emergency responder was aboard.
“You’ve got time to get off the boat,” Mr. Thomas shouted at the worker.
The Royal National Lifeboat Institution, a charity that dispatches rescue vessels, said that two of its lifeboats had been sent on Tuesday to assist a small boat. The charity did not say where the boat had come from but that it had been at sea for 36 hours. British Border Force vessels had not initially been able to help, the charity said.
The French coast guard said in a statement that a boat carrying about 60 migrants had crossed the English Channel.
Britain’s Home Office, which oversees immigration enforcement, said that border officials were investigating the episode. A small boat disembarked on the coast of Dover on Tuesday afternoon, the office said, and 21 people had been detained and taken to a migrant facility for processing.
The police said in its statement on Thursday that the 37 year-old man remained in custody.
Mr. Thomas is a close associate of the far-right activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, widely known as Tommy Robinson, who shared an appeal on social media on Thursday in support of him.
Three other people were also charged after anti-immigrant demonstrators on Tuesday gathered in Gosport, a town on the south coast of England, to protest the boat crossings. Six people were arrested, and three people were charged with assaulting an emergency worker.
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