Belgium is new battleground in fight against illegal immigrants
THE National Crime Agency (NCA) warned last year that Belgium was the new frontier in the battle against illegal immigration as people smugglers moved to evade tougher security elsewhere along the coast.
Tom Dowdall, the NCA’S deputy director, said in October that improved security in France meant the smugglers were targeting easier routes through ports like Zeebrugge where the 39 suspected migrants who died yesterday were picked up.
The NCA also warned there had been a sharp rise in the number of migrants using “higher risk methods of clandestine entry” to the UK such as refrigerated HGVS and containers, as well as the small boats that have been used in increasing numbers to cross the Channel this year.
The Belgian immigration minister, Theo Francken, has urged Britain to strengthen its border controls as he said scant checks and a booming black market were proving a major pull for illegal migrants.
He said: “They all want to go to your country because you don’t have identity cards, your black market is very lucrative, you have a lot of English-speaking migrants already from those communities.
“It’s a real big push factor your country, the British way of life
“We need a Uk-belgium bilateral as soon as possible because the problem
is really increasing and Britain has to help us out.”
Yesterday the office of Zeebrugge’s harbour master said they found migrants trying to stowaway “every day” at the Belgian port.
David Wood, a former director general of UK immigration enforcement, said ports like Zeebrugge offered the crime gangs potentially easy pickings.
“It’s displacement. Zeebrugge is a freight and container port which isn’t geared up to detect migrants. It’s organised crime finding a route that is guaranteed success and where you can charge premium rates,” he said.
The number of potential victims of human trafficking reported to the National Referral Mechanism – the programme to identify and support victims including those who have arrived in the UK as a result of people smuggling – rose by 36 per cent last year to 6,993 cases.
The National Crime Agency said rival crime gangs were also now more coordinated. “Our area of concern is the fact that organised crime groups are often basing themselves or leading migrants into vehicles in Belgium rather than France,” said Mr Dowdall.
“They then move them across the Belgium-france border and then make their way to the Channel ports. They think moving from country to country makes it more difficult for law enforcement to coordinate their activity.”
Two reports by David Bolt, chief inspector of borders and immigration, have warned chronic shortages of staff at smaller ports on the south and east coast of England had left them open to illegal immigrants.
He described how border staff felt they were so stretched they could not check trailers for migrants at the same time as dealing with the flow of tourists.
The Government says it is recruiting an extra 1,400 border staff and Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, indicated she was willing to consider tougher sentences for human traffickers after Labour MP John Woodcock called for maximum jail terms to be raised to life.