Migrants’ £10,000 ticket to UK
Gangs turn to ‘less busy’ ports in northern England to smuggle people into UK, border police warn
MIGRANTS have been paying almost £10,000 each to cross the Channel in private boats as people traffickers find new ways to avoid tighter security at Dover and Calais.
Gangs are also turning to “less busy” ports in northern England in the hope that officials there are less vigilant, warned Tom Dowdall, deputy director of the National Crime Agency’s border policing command. Some people smugglers, he said, had gone as far north as Hull and Immingham on the Humber.
Officials at the Organised Immigration Crime Taskforce, set up last year in response to the migrant crisis, discovered that the trade is run via 200 social media sites, including Facebook.
MIGRANTS have been paying almost £10,000 each to cross the Channel in private boats as people traffickers find new ways to avoid tighter security at Dover and Calais.
Gangs are also turning to “less busy” ports in northern England in the hope that officials there are less vigilant, warned Tom Dowdall, the deputy director of the National Crime Agency’s border policing command.
Some people smugglers, he said, had gone as far north as Hull and Immingham on the River Humber.
New figures released by the National Crime Agency (NCA), following an investigation into the multi-millionpound industry, also discovered Iraqis paying up to £13,500 to fly into the UK using expertly forged documents.
Officials at the Organised Immigration Crime Taskforce, which was set up by David Cameron last year in response to the migrant crisis, discovered that the trade is run via 200 social media sites, including Facebook.
They also found that some of the people organising the smuggling had arrived in the UK via the routes they now operate. Following the recent crackdown on the “Aegean route” into Europe via Turkey and Greece, officials said smugglers are expanding their operations from Libya.
Known as the “Central Mediterranean route”, the journey from Libya to Italy was previously the most popular way for migrants to enter Europe, with 170,000 migrants using it in 2014.
However, it was eclipsed last year by the “Aegean route” that uses the shorter stretches of water between Turkey and the Greek islands. Some 885,000 migrants passed that way last year.
If the Libyan route becomes the main conduit for migrants into Europe again, it is likely to renew concerns about terrorists making their way in.
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) controls Sirte on Libya’s Mediterranean coast and has vowed to send over fighters disguised as migrants.
More migrants using the Libyan route could also lead to a rise in the numbers of drownings, as it involves a more perilous crossing over open sea.
British warships are already patrolling the southern Mediterranean as part of an EU-led naval effort to stop people-smuggling ships. But the vessels are also obliged to pick up any migrant boats that they come across, leading to criticisms that they are indirectly encouraging the smugglers’ trade. One officer working with the task force said: “What we have seen over the last couple of weeks is a significant increase in the use of the Central Mediterranean route, and last week it actually outweighed the Aegean route in terms of numbers.”
In a briefing on Monday to outline its progress so far, Ian Cruxton, the task force’s director, said that “hundreds” of British criminals were now involved in smuggling people into the UK.
The NCA’s officials spoke as Austria announced that it is to tighten controls and build a fence on its border with Italy, amid the fears that the Central Mediterranean route was growing again.
The tougher measures will be imposed at the Brenner Pass, a key trans- port corridor between northern and southern Europe and a symbol of the Schengen principle of visa-free travel.
Austria estimates that up to 300,000 migrants are already in makeshift camps in Libya, waiting to cross the Mediterranean to Sicily.
Italy’s coastguard also said last night that it had rescued 4,000 migrants in the past two days.