UK threatens jail for people smugglers who advertise on social media
Prime Minister Keir Starmer's Labour government is under huge political and public pressure to cut the number of migrants arriving illegally in small boats from France. More than 25,000 people have made the crossing so far this year.
Analysis by the Interior Ministry showed around 80% of migrants arriving on small boats had used social media during their journey to find or communicate with people smugglers.
Under a new offence, which will be added to legislation already passing through parliament, individuals who post online to advertise services that facilitate a breach of immigration laws will face fines and prison sentences of up to five years.
It is already an offence to facilitate illegal immigration to Britain, but the government said its latest plan would give law enforcement agencies another option to disrupt the criminal gangs that profit from organising the crossings.
Last month, the government launched a new sanctions regime allowing it to freeze assets, impose travel bans and block access to the country's financial system for individuals and entities involved in enabling irregular migration.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
19 minutes ago
- The Independent
Noem wants ‘Alligator Alcatraz' detention centers near airport runways across US to boost migrant deportation ‘efficiency'
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem envisions more 'Alligator Alcatraz'-like immigration detention centers across the country, including near airport runways, to boost the 'efficiency' of Donald Trump's mass deportation agenda. The Florida facility is serving as a model for state-run detention centers, and 'the locations we're looking at are right by airport runways that will help give us an efficiency that we've never had before,' Noem told CBS News. Noem told the network she has appealed directly to state officials, and 'most of them are interested.' She added: 'Many of them have facilities that may be empty or underutilized.' The administration has reportedly sought out facilities in Arizona, Nebraska and Louisiana, which currently houses the only Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center on a tarmac. The Alexandria Staging Facility sits across from the Alexandria International Airport, which has emerged as the nation's deportation capital under the Trump administration. For more than a decade, ICE — which operates under Homeland Security — has turned to corporate shipping and logistics companies for inspiration for rounding up and deporting immigrants. Shortly after he was tapped to lead the agency in March, ICE's acting director, Todd Lyons, bluntly compared the movement of people to packages. 'We need to get better at treating this like a business, where this mass deportation operation is something like you would see and say, like, Amazon trying to get your Prime delivery within 24 hours,' Lyons told a law enforcement conference in Phoenix in April. 'So, trying to figure out how to do that with human beings,' he said. Lyons later expanded on his remarks about treating immigrants like packages in an interview with Boston 25 News that same month. 'The key part that got left out of that statement was, I said, they deal with boxes, we deal with human beings, which is totally different,' he said. ICE 'should be run like a corporation,' he told the outlet. 'We need to be better about removing those individuals who have been lawfully ordered out of the country in a safe, efficient manner,' Lyons continued. 'We can't trade innovation and efficiency for how we treat the people in our custody.' In a statement to The Independent, Homeland Security assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the agency is 'working at turbo speed on cost-effective and innovative ways to deliver on the American people's mandate for mass deportations of criminal illegal aliens.' 'With the opening of Alligator Alcatraz, we expanded facilities and bed space in just days,' she added. 'We look forward to partnering with other states to open other similar facilities to house some the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens.' Named Alligator Alcatraz by state and federal officials, a 3,000-bed detention center opened in south Florida last month within the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, roughly 43 miles from Miami in the middle of the Everglades. A federal lawsuit accuses the facility of blocking detainees from legal counsel and forcing people into 'overcrowded, unsanitary, and harsh conditions' with inadequate food, flood-prone cells, and 'excessive use of force' from guards that sent at least one man to a hospital. It's also unclear who is actually running the facility and who wants to take responsibility for it. Government lawyers could not immediately answer in court whether the federal government or Florida is responsible. In court filings, immigration officials claimed that the facility is operating through the federal 287(g) program, which allows local and state law enforcement agencies to enforce federal immigration law. ICE has inked nearly 800 such agreements covering 40 states. 'We need to get to the bottom of the interplay between the federal and state authorities on who's running this thing,' Florida District Judge Rodolfo A. Ruiz II said during a recent court hearing in a lawsuit against the facility. The makeshift facility is expected to cost roughly $450 million within its first year, at roughly $245 per inmate bed per night, according to DHS. ICE spent roughly $187 per adult detainee per day in 2023. Still, Noem claims that the Alligator Alcatraz model is 'much better' than ICE's current arrangement with local jails and for-profit prison companies, which operate a vast majority of the nation's detention centers. Funding for Alligator Alcatraz largely comes from FEMA's Shelter and Services Program. The incoming wave of state-run detention centers is expected to tap into $45 billion in new funding for ICE as part of Trump's 'big, beautiful bill.' The bill also allocates $30 billion for an aggressive recruitment campaign to hire another 10,000 ICE agents. Altogether, the bill earmarks more than $170 billion for immigration enforcement — a boon to for-profit contractors and cash-strapped states looking to tap into billions of taxpayer dollars. Putting those new facilities near airports and runways will help ICE cut costs by 'facilitating quick turnarounds,' Noem told CBS. 'They're all strategically designed to make sure that people are in beds for less days,' Noem said. 'It can be much more efficient once they get their hearings, due process, paperwork.'
BBC News
19 minutes ago
- BBC News
Mum 'broken' by death in custody of 'beautiful boy'
The family of a 26-year-old man who died in police custody after collapsing in his cell have said "nothing can fix the pain we feel". Ellis Rocks was arrested by Greater Manchester Police on Thursday at a hotel in Wigan on suspicion of a drug offence, before he was searched and placed in a was later found unresponsive and suffered a cardiac arrest on the way to the hospital where he died on Sunday, triggering an Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) mother Paula Wilkie said in a tribute his family had been left "broken" by his death and thanked the paramedics who attended to him. She said she spent the weekend by his side along with his sister "and held his hands as he took his last breath" on Sunday morning. The mother said she wants "justice" for her son and to "make sure this never happens to anyone's child again"."May my little boy rest in peace and we will fight for justice till the day we die," she said. 'Full facts' An IOPC spokesman said a "thorough and independent investigation" into what happened was needed after his would include probing the interactions officers had with Mr Rocks before he was taken into custody, and what happened after he was detained, the watchdog was arrested on Thursday at the Britannia Hotel in Almond Brook Road, Standish after reports of a man trying to deal drugs on the premises. Detention officers found him unresponsive in his cell at about 02:30 BST on Friday, and he was taken to hospital by Rocks suffered a cardiac arrest en route, and later died in the from the IOPC declared an official investigation would take place after his death, and has reviewed CCTV from the custody suite and body-worn video footage from Chief Constable Chris Sykes of GMP said the force would cooperate fully with the IOPC also urged people to "not rush to judgement before the full facts are established". Listen to the best of BBC Radio Manchester on Sounds and follow BBC Manchester on Facebook, X, and Instagram. You can also send story ideas via Whatsapp to 0808 100 2230.
BBC News
19 minutes ago
- BBC News
Dozens of suspects still wanted over 2024 disorder
Dozens of suspected rioters are still wanted by police a year after disorder that broke out in the wake of the murders of three girls in Southport.A website is being set up with details of about 40 suspects still wanted across five police force areas - Merseyside, Greater Manchester, Cleveland, Northumbria and Avon and scenes spread across the UK in the wake of the stabbings last year amid initial disinformation being spread about the man unrest led to a total of 1,876 arrests with 1,110 charged so far, the National Police Chiefs' Council said. Police chiefs have launched the national appeal for suspects wanted for "significant" offences from the disorder, including throwing bricks and seriously assaulting people. Read more: Did social media fan the flames of riot in Southport? Assistant Chief Constable Ian Drummond-Smith, who led the national response to investigating the riots, said: "One year on, we've still got some people who we have got good images of and we haven't yet identified."I think the key thing is having a good image of someone is one thing, knowing who they are is another."We're asking the public to have a look, and to see if they recognise anyone." Crown Prosecution Service data tracking cases related to the disorder showed 821 defendants out of 859 were convicted by the end of comes after repeated protests have been held outside a hotel in the Essex town of Epping, where migrants are housed, after an asylum seeker was charged with allegedly attempting to kiss a 14-year-old have also been protests in Norfolk and London but so far wider unrest has been Drummond-Smith said: "We have a duty to facilitate protest but what we saw last year, and in a few isolated cases this year, is where it's gone to criminality and to serious disorder." 'Contain and prevent' He said police hoped "swift" justice would deter anyone thinking about engaging in serious disorder this senior officer added: "We've made effective use of CCTV, body-worn video, and we've been able to bring a lot of people in front of the courts."Regarding the recent protests, he continued: "If we can respond to serious disorder swiftly, I think we can contain that and prevent it from spreading across the country."We've sharpened up our ability to mobilise quickly and move resources around the country."Last summer's disturbances, which saw mosques and hotels housing asylum seekers targeted, were denounced as "far-right thuggery" by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer. Listen to the best of BBC Radio Merseyside on Sounds and follow BBC Merseyside on Facebook, X, and Instagram. You can also send story ideas via Whatsapp to 0808 100 2230.
