Boost border controls to keep the criminals out

DRUG lords from Albania are making a mockery of our deportation system by returning to commit more crime after being booted out.

Anyone deported from the UK is placed on a watchlist and banned from re-entering the country.

However, a Sunday Express investigation found several cases where deported Albanian criminals, including high-end drug dealers, have resurfaced in the UK, sometimes within a year of being kicked out and in other cases multiple times.

One serious criminal officials hope will not return is Albanian Alek Dauti, 31, the ringleader of a people smuggling network that tried to get hundreds of illegal migrants into the UK.

He was extradited to Belgium on Friday to serve a 10 year jail sentence he received in his absence in December.

Dauti’s gang used corrupt truck drivers to smuggle men, women and children into the UK, sometimes using refrigerated lorries.

Last week police in Blackpool said two Albanian men were facing deportation and another was on the run, after they raided a cannabis factory in the town.

Another man, Esmerald Cuni, 25, was convicted of using false Greek identity documents at Hull Crown Court in November. He was found in possession of drugs and his fingerprints gave away his true Albanian identity.

Cuni was first found illegally in the UK in 2015 and deported but came back and was jailed for a year for possession of illegal documents.

Tory MP Philip Hollobone said: “Our present border controls are evidently inadequate in preventing Albanian crime on our streets. While measures are being taken they are not effective.”

Many Albanians illegally enter the UK hiding on lorries in EU countries, before getting work at hand car washes.

A video posted on an Albanian Facebook page shows a young man, possibly a teenager, hiding in a lorry destined for the UK.

Posted under the headline “Hasian on way to London” it received several comments from well wishers and others branding him “stupid”.

Many have turned to people smuggling gangs to obtain false identity documents of EU countries. A high proportion of those able to slip back into the UK are part of Albanian Mafia drugs gangs who the National Crime Agency (NCA) has warned are taking control of Britain’s cocaine trade, due to their direct links to Colombian cartels, and also homegrown cannabis cultivation. One Albanian drug dealer THE fact that convicted Albanian and other criminals are re-entering the UK after deportation may not surprise many, but it should ring alarm bells in the Home Office.

If we can’t keep out even those we have thrown out as baddies, what hope is there for dealing with illegal immigration generally?

This calls attention to the Government’s failures over the monitoring and removal of foreign criminals – of whom there are 9,000 in UK prisons and thousands more at large.

According to the National Crime Agency many of those who re-enter the UK, after being deported, do so with false EU identity papers.

With free movement set to end after Brexit, the Government must ensure border officials are better able to check that suspicious people are the rightful holders of any passport.

As funding for border functions has been cut by a quarter since 2012, is it any wonder criminals are getting in? So, what is to be done?

Having entered the New Year talking tough about migrants crossing the Channel in dinghies – only a small proportion of the 70,000 illegal immigrants annually joining over a million already here – Home Secretary Sajid Javid and Chancellor Philip Hammond could begin by boosting the border control budget.

Seventy seven per cent of the public consider illegal immigration a serious concern. And Mr Javid could start to restore some of the public’s lost faith in our immigration system by getting a grip of the Albanian villains cocking a snook at our border controls.

was deported three times but managed to sneak back a fourth time when he was found with 1kg of cocaine worth £26,000 and £14,000 in cash at his home in Weedon, Northamptonshire.

Baksim Bushati, 42, was deported three times between 2005 and 2013 for battery and having false documents, but kept returning to the UK. He was jailed for seven years over the drugs in 2014 and was due to be deported again.

Judge Richard Bray who sentenced him

described our borders as a “leaking sieve”. The Home Office was slammed for not listing him on the national warnings index that may have prevented re-entry. A source said he has yet to return to Albania.

Clirim Malecaj, 32, was jailed for six years in 2015 for being part of a gang of 20 Albanians flooding Manchester with cocaine. The court heard he was earlier jailed for a similar offence and deported but returned to continue dealing.