Calais hotel owners held over people smuggling

FIVE hoteliers were arrested yesterday over their alleged involvement in a peoplesmuggling network that charged illegal immigrants up to £9,000 for a ‘guaranteed passage’ to Britain.

French police surrounded three hotels in Calais in a series of dawn raids and arrested managers and workers who have allegedly been assisting people traffickers.

The gang had reportedly been using the hotels to house migrants before they were smuggled aboard lorries and on to ferries to the UK, French media reported.

‘The arrests came after a surveillance operation over the past three weeks,’ public prosecutor Pascal Marconville said.

‘They had been offering migrants a guaranteed passage to England for between 5,000 and 10,000 euros per head (£4,300 to £8,600), depending on the form of transport used to get them across the Channel.’

The French and Algerian nationals remain in custody in Boulogne and are due to appear in court in the next few days.

Lorries, vans and private cars were all used in the scam, with those waiting to travel staying in the three hotels, it was alleged.

Those arrested were allegedly hiding would-be asylum seekers in filthy conditions within the budget hotels.

Many of the migrants were reportedly living seven to a small room.

Investigators said none of the hotels around the central Place des Armes in Calais were owned by Albanians suspected of running the people-trafficking gangs, but the owners and managers allegedly cooperated with the smugglers.

The arrests follow reports from French authorities that hundreds of migrants have returned to Calais following the closure of the Jungle refugee camp last October. Some 8,000 men, women and children from countries such as Afghanistan and Syria were displaced to other parts of France when the shanty town was razed. Now police estimate that there are up to 400 migrants hiding in Calais and that 15 more are arriving each day.

After more than two decades of Calais being at the centre of Europe’s migrant crisis, the French are determined to maintain a zero tolerance approach to new arrivals.

Security has been stepped up around the Channel Tunnel, and in the port area, where ferries head to the South Coast ports of England night and day.

Last month police union spokesman Frederic Baland said that dismantling the Jungle had not stopped migrants from making the trip to the French port. ‘We’ve gone back to the

‘Guaranteed passage’

same situation we had here three or four years ago, with small groups scattered in the town,’ he said. ‘We estimate the number of daily arrivals at between 30 and 50.’

Francois Guennoc, vice-president of the Auberge des Migrants aid group, told a French newspaper that migrants returning was a growing problem. ‘The migrants are coming back, and government is in denial about the current situation in Calais,’ he said.

Last year Calais mayor Natacha Bouchart blamed the UK’s ‘black market economy’ and ‘cushy benefits system’ for the thousands of migrants in her town.

‘Calais is a hostage to the British. The UK border should be moved from Calais to the English side of the Channel because we’re not here to do their jobs,’ she said at the time.