Albanian police to perform criminal checks at Dover
ALBANIAN migrants crossing the Channel face criminal record checks by police from their own nation stationed at Dover, it has emerged.
Home Office officials are due to meet Albanian police chiefs today to agree the plans for officers from the Balkan state to check fingerprints and biometric data against their own databases.
Government sources said it would enable Border Force and immigration officers to identify and fast-track the return to Albania of anyone not “conducive to the public good”. Immigration officials are also using legislation that took effect in June to detain and speed up the deportation of Albanians without criminal records but whose asylum claims are “unfounded”.
The moves come after a surge in Albanians in small boats crossing the Channel. They are now said by Home Office officials to account for 50 to 60 per cent of arrivals. More than 25,000 migrants have reached the UK this year across the Dover Strait, double last year’s rate. The deployment of at least two Albanian officers is understood to have been proposed by Gledis Nano, general director of the Albanian state police, during a visit a month ago to meet National Crime Agency chiefs and Home Office officials. All migrants are fingerprinted and photographed by Border Force on arrival.
“This biometric data will enable officers to detect any Albanian wanted by Albanian police or who has a criminal background,” said a source. “They will have two laptops with all the systems and data that Albanian police have.”
Albania posted police officers in five French cities to help combat Albanian organised crime gangs.
A Border Force source said: “This access would help us immensely, assuming there are no data protection or legal issues that would prevent the Albanian police from receiving biographic and biometric data captured by UK Border Force under UK law.
“It will not only enable us to identify who they are but also if there are known criminals among them. However, there may be a risk in sharing information about asylum seekers with the government of the country they are claiming to fear persecution from – at least before the claim is assessed.”
The move is part of a wider agreement to remove criminals and illegal migrants to Albania struck by Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, last summer. As part of the deal, the UK has spent £1million on a new police station at Rinas international airport in Tirana to help process the returnees.
A delegation of four officers from the Albanian state police forensic laboratories is also due to meet Home Office officials today to discuss UK funding to boost their capacity for DNA analysis and processing data.
Any migrant who has served a year in jail can be removed from the UK under post-brexit laws introduced in 2020. The Government can also refuse entry on the grounds of “serious harm, persistent offending or where it is conducive to the public good”.
When Boris Johnson promised that Brexit would allow the country to “Take Back Control”, that control was widely understood to include the securing of our borders. That is why it is so dispiriting that record numbers continue to cross the Channel illegally. So far this year, more than 25,000 have made the journey – almost as many as the total for the whole of 2021, and up from fewer than 300 in 2018. Some 50,000 may make the Channel trip by year’s end.
In part, of course, this is due to the intransigence and ineffectiveness of the French authorities, who have signed deals worth £80million to clamp down on the crossings, yet show themselves capable of intercepting only a handful of the countless inflatables attempting the trip. The fact that a record number of trips has been attempted in August, when so many French state employees are on holiday, is likely to be no coincidence.
But the asylum system is also to blame. Over half of those now appearing on our shores come from Albania, a country whose nationals are known to have established ruthless control over much of Britain’s drugs business. Yet while border officials may suspect many of those who make the Channel trip of being hardened criminals, they are forced to hear well-rehearsed tales of modern slavery and process asylum claims instead.
All of which makes it welcome that, as we report today, the Home Office intends to deploy recent legislation to identify, then fast track the removal of, Albanians with a criminal past. The programme of mandatory checks will depend upon the assistance of Albanian police officers based in the UK. Of course, this is not the first time that Britain has hatched a bilateral scheme to limit illegal migration. So it must be hoped that the joint effort with Albanian officers is more immediately effective than the Rwanda deal signed earlier this year, which remains the subject of legal challenge.
The new scheme is needed partly because securing the country’s borders is an essential – perhaps the primary – duty of the state, and one whose constant flouting is toxic to all faith in government. But it is also required because the appalling scenes on Channel beaches give quite the wrong impression of legal immigration since Brexit – which has actually increased as control over the system has been repatriated. Nothing better shows that Britons remain welcoming to talented, hardworking foreigners legally looking to help themselves, and their new homeland, prosper.