Detectives have revealed that migrant smuggling gangs are attempting to ship inflatable dinghies to France using air freight services. The National Crime Agency (NCA) and Border Force seized 25 vessels at a freight hub at East Midlands Airport, marking the second time small-boat equipment has been seized in the UK this year.
Boats seized from air freight shipment
The 25 dinghies, each around nine metres long, could have carried 1,700 migrants. The pallets were discovered on an air freight shipment from Turkey to the Netherlands. Officers from the NCA stated that each vessel could have carried 70 people.
NCA deputy director of investigations Craig Turner said: “We continue to target groups or individuals directly involved in the supply of boats and engines used in the Channel for people smuggling. This work is happening both overseas, with international partners, and here in the UK. So far, it has led to the seizure of in excess of 1,600 boats and engines, denying their use to criminal networks.
Impact on criminal networks
“Our assessment is that this is having an impact, driving up the cost of boats and engines, making it more difficult to get them to the coast and eating into the profits of the criminal gangs involved. I’ve no doubt the boats we’ve seized here would have ended up being used to risk the lives of a huge number of people in the Channel had we not stepped in. Our investigation continues.”
The seizure comes as recent Channel crossings have intensified, with dinghies carrying more than 100 people intercepted off the coast of Portsmouth. Some 149 people were brought into Gosport on Sunday night, and two men died during another crossing in the early hours of Monday morning after a fire erupted following a petrol leak on a vessel off the coast at Berck.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp, speaking at the Conservative Party Conference, said a future Conservative government would ramp up deportations of failed asylum seekers, foreign criminals and visa overstayers, using technology like live facial recognition and increased raids on workplaces suspected of employing illegal immigrants.
