Police swoop on gang who sent 2,000 migrants across Channel
French raids smash people -smuggling ring suspected of organising 50 crossings during summer months
A PEOPLE-SMUGGLING gang behind50 completed Channel crossings, carrying 2,000 migrants, has been smashed by French police.
Officers seized more than a dozen boats and 700 life jackets in raids that also uncovered a “factory” supplying nautical equipment.
The ring, based in Lille, a northern French city about 60 miles from Calais, and run by Iraqi Kurdish migrants, is suspected of having organised 80 Channel crossings over the summer, of which 50 were successful.
Each Channel dinghy generally carries more than 40 migrants and is said by police to have netted the smugglers around £70,000 apiece – more than £3.5 million in total.
News of the raids came as an estimated 650 to 700 migrants crossed the Channel yesterday following 667 who were intercepted in the Channel on Wednesday. It takes the total past 31,000 for this year, compared with 28,561 for the whole of 2021.
A new analysis also revealed that the cost of housing asylum seekers in hotels has risen from an estimated £70million a year in March 2021, to £1.28billion a year this year.
It is thought that around 33,000 migrants are being housed in hotels, at a cost of £4,250 a month per asylum seeker, as a result of the surge in Channel migrants, according to the analysis by think tank Migration Watch UK.
The raid is the biggest breakthrough for the multi-national Channel security operation since July when more than 900 officers staged dawn raids across Europe and the UK to break up a people-smuggling gang behind 10,000 migrant crossings.
This week’s raids came as a result of a similar intelligence-sharing operation between authorities in France, Belgium, Britain, Germany and the Netherlands, who are all trying to crack down on migrants crossing the Channel.
The original tip-off came after a border guard patrol discovered a group of French youths carrying inflatables from Germany into the Netherlands.
The ring had a logistics hub in Lille with “a real factory supplying nautical equipment”, said Xavier Delrieu, the head of Ocriest, the French agency battling illegal migration.
In what was their biggest ever seizure of equipment, they found 13 inflatable boats, 14 outboard engines, 700 life jackets, 100 pumps and 700 litres (185 gallons) of fuel, Delrieu said. Three Iraqi men have been charged, along with three French suspects.
The Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, is said to be considering seeking joint beach patrols with the French to help prevent Channel migrant crossings as part of any deal to continue UK funding.
Both she and Liz Truss are committed to the Rwanda asylum policy, currently stalled by a High Court challenge over its legality. Ms Truss said, during her leadership campaign, that she wanted to extend deals to more countries.
It emerged yesterday that the Home Office has told more asylum seekers they may be sent to Rwanda in legal notices issued during the period of national mourning following the Queen’s death.
A letter, disclosed by The Independent, dated Sept 13, told one man that he could be declared “inadmissible” for protection in the UK because he had been present in France before crossing the English Channel.