Latest news with #AlbanianMigrants
Telegraph
8 hours ago
- Telegraph
People smugglers advertise ‘back door' migrant routes on Facebook
People smugglers are exploiting the soft border between Britain and Ireland to try to bring illegal migrants into the UK, Facebook adverts reveal. Albanian gangs are charging £4,000 to get the migrants to this country through the 'back door' route, a Telegraph investigation shows. The gangs give migrants fake Italian ID cards that are used to fly them into Ireland, before they sneak into mainland Britain on ferries, allowing them to work illegally or claim asylum with their Albanian passports. The immigration scam is one of a series of ruses being promoted on Facebook. Advertisements offer the chance for Albanian migrants to enter the UK via plane, lorry or yacht. The routes are being advertised as an alternative to Channel crossings after a crackdown by authorities and the introduction of a fast-track deportation scheme that reduced the number of Albanians arriving in small boats from 12,658 in 2022 to fewer than 1,000 last year. It has forced the Border Force and the National Crime Agency (NCA) to adapt their tactics. Twenty Albanians were found hidden in a yacht intercepted in Cornwall in April. Last month, 33 people were arrested as part of a crackdown on people smugglers in Northern Ireland abusing the common travel area (CTA). The CTA allows free movement between the UK and Ireland. Passports are not required for UK and Irish citizens travelling between the countries. Although air and sea carriers say they require some form of ID, documents are not always checked. Ireland is not in the EU's Schengen Area but will accept EU IDs as well as passports. Ben Thomas, the Home Office immigration enforcement deputy director, said: 'Criminal networks seek to bypass robust border checks through fraudulent means and trap vulnerable people into further illegal activities. 'The success of this operation marks a significant step up in enforcement activity leading to the arrest of 33 criminals who attempted to abuse the common travel area and undermine the UK's border security.' In a post on a Facebook group entitled Albanians in the UK, a people smuggler said: 'Who'd like to go up to the island and join their family? We have the best ways and super offers.' An undercover reporter, posing as a prospective illegal migrant, was told: 'I'd like to suggest to you the best way –by airplane from Italy. I hope you have travelled in the past by airplane and do not have any banning orders to enter the EU. I sent a couple and a child one week ago. It went very well. 'From Italy, you get to Dublin, Ireland, and then to the UK. It's £4,000 sterling per person. Money to be paid in Albania. We send you from Albania to Italy with your Albanian passports, then from Italy to Dublin on Italian ID cards. You will stay a maximum of one or two days in Naples. 'The IDs are Italian. They are real and resemble the person travelling. No one will touch you at the gates. We have information and our person there. 'In Dublin, you claim asylum with the Albanian passport, then you go to Northern Ireland and travel to the UK. On arrival in the UK, there is no passport control. Do not worry about it. 'That family I mentioned to you went to Dublin on easyJet.' The people smuggler sent a video of an easyJet plane with an Albanian showing the two-finger symbol of liberty. Another ad in a Facebook group entitled Work in the UK, with 17,800 members, posted on June 7: 'Lorry, yacht, and airplane. The best prices for those who'd like to get to the UK.' A third in the same group charged £5,000 for a 'lorry to the UK'. A fourth, dated June 1, said: 'Hello Albanians. Who is interested in getting to the UK on a small boat or lorry? Leave your mobile number and I will contact you.' Another account, under a female name, claimed to be working for the Home Office and was willing to help asylum seekers with their application. Her ad, posted on June 4, stated: 'Anyone who needs help with documents, I work for the Home Office and help Albanians prepare documents, write letters to family and friends, take photos with relevant descriptions – everything needed to build the case before it is sent. Please, only write to me if you are serious.'
BBC News
24-05-2025
- BBC News
Yachts an easy way to bring migrants to UK, says ex-smuggler
A former British soldier who became a people smuggler has told the BBC how he transported dozens of Vietnamese migrants by yacht into private marinas in seaside towns across south-east man was convicted and sent to prison in 2019, but we have learned that smugglers are still using similar routes and methods - described by Border Force as "a really concerning risk".Private marinas have "no more security than a caravan site", one harbourmaster on the Essex coast told us - while another said "there is nothing to stop this [people smuggling] happening".The ex-soldier and smuggler, who we are calling Nick, has also been describing how he smuggled Albanian people in cars on to ferries - and how the migrants then jumped into lorries on the vehicle decks mid-journey in the English smuggling routes - whether by yacht or ferry - were "easy" and "low risk", Nick told said he had chosen to speak out now because he was "angry" he had been jailed for a crime that was still very possible to commit. He claimed to know people who, in the past year, had used the same routes and methods as him was "pointless", he said, if the authorities would not improve security to stop other people Force is responsible for securing the 11,000 miles of UK coastline, but the security of harbours and marinas rests with private operators, Charlie Eastaugh, the force's director of maritime, told the BBC."We patrol 24/7, we carry out proactive, as well as reactive, operations," he said - citing a luxury yacht, hiding 20 Albanians below deck, that was intercepted en route to Newquay in Cornwall last month. Nick's story is a particularly striking example of how a British citizen became involved in the international people-smuggling "stories and confessions represent a concerning risk posed to the UK around people smuggling and irregular migration at sea", said Border Force's Charlie Eastaugh. We will "look at the vulnerabilities he [Nick] has identified," he added. Unlike many migrants crossing the English Channel in small boats, the majority of those transported by Nick did not want to be found by authorities to formally claim asylum. Having arrived on UK shores, they wanted to disappear anonymously into the black economy. Nick said he had been told the Vietnamese migrants would go on to work on cannabis fact that Nick travelled with them too - skippering a yacht - is also all started in 2009, when an Albanian friend he met on a construction site recruited him - saying Nick's pale complexion and UK passport would help him to avoid suspicion from border friend, whom we are calling Matt, offered to pay Nick £3,500 for every migrant he smuggled into the UK. Nick was working as a self-employed builder at the time, but his business had been pulled under by the financial crash in the late 2000s and he was struggling to make ends meet. He also had a baby on the way and was desperate to provide for them, he told spoke briefly to the BBC and confirmed details of Nick's story - but we did not move forward with a full interview because he demanded payment. At first, Nick picked up migrants hiding near French ferry ports, concealing them in the boot of his migrants tended to be Albanian men, he told us, with no right to work in the UK. Often they had been smuggled across the English Channel three or four times previously, only to be deported each time, he added. Some of his other passengers, from places such as Sri Lanka, were looking to claim asylum however, he told the ferry, Nick would pick a lorry that another smuggling-gang member waiting on dry land would spot easily. Nick said he would send them a photo and share the vehicle's number then tell the migrant to get on top of the lorry, he explained. "You give him a knife… just cut one side like a V, you slide in." The waiting gang member would then trail the lorry once it disembarked and collect the migrant when it eventually stopped. The lorry driver would have had no idea or involvement, said Nick."I'm telling you now how easy it is," he told us - insisting he would never have been caught, had it not been for a friend, whom he had taken along one day, alerting the French authorities with suspicious body language. Nick ended up spending five months in a prison in meanwhile, was also eventually caught and given a seven-year UK prison sentence. It had happened after a migrant jumped off a fast-moving lorry, to avoid paying the smuggler, and severed his was reunited with Matt, who was granted early release, in 2017 and the pair began smuggling people across the Channel again. This time however, Nick told us he took charge of a plan that saw Vietnamese migrants arrive from France by yacht at Ramsgate operation was brokered by one of Matt's contacts, Nick told us, a Vietnamese woman we are calling Lin. She had lived in the UK for more than a decade and had spent time behind bars for growing cannabis and removing the proceeds of drug said she paid him and Matt £12,000 per migrant. 'People are going to hate me' Nick, who grew up sailing the English Channel with his father, told us he knew Ramsgate Marina was a big, low-security place which "no-one watched". As he was a registered member of the marina, there was no reason for anyone to suspect wrongdoing, he was also a good place to keep tabs on the comings and goings of Border Force agents, he told us, because a fleet of the force's boats was based there too."People are going to hate me because there'll be smuggling going on now," said Nick, who insists private marinas in English seaside towns are still hotspots. "When they hear this, there's going to be an issue." Two harbourmasters, speaking anonymously to the BBC, agreed with Nick that private marinas were an easy target for people-smugglers because they were not manned 24/ based in Essex likened security to a caravan site and said that someone could hide people in a boat "easily"."In a busy marina in peak season, with a lot of people coming in and out, it would be very easy to do this," they Kent, Thanet District Council - which is responsible for Ramsgate Marina - told us it was Border Force, and not individual harbours, that was "the front line response for immigration and illegal activities"."Staff at the port and harbour are vigilant and report any concerns or suspicions directly to Border Force for them to follow up," said a spokesperson. There are hundreds of harbours and marinas in the UK and it would not be a reasonable expectation for Border Force to have a fixed presence at all of them, said the force's Charlie Eastaugh. But we do receive "really good information" from the maritime community which the force responds to, he added. "We need to be able to respond to intelligence so we can proportionately use our resources around the whole of the UK."We also spoke to former Border Force chief Tony Smith, who told us the "vast majority" of the agency's resources were currently deployed to the Small Boats Operational Command - focusing on specific routes used by large numbers of people crowded into small craft."My preference certainly would be to be able to deploy more widely and to look more across the whole of the UK coastline to identify threats," he said, adding he thought the BBC's conversations with Nick would be "really, really helpful as another source of intelligence".More than 12,500 people have crossed the English Channel on small boats so far in 2025 - and a record number of migrants died while attempting to make the dangerous crossing in many people cross the Channel in small boats and how many claim asylum?Small-boat crossings are different from what Nick was doing because most of those migrants want to be seen and rescued by Border Force to claim asylum in the UK. Smugglers are not on the boats, which are instead often manned by migrants who get discounts on their numbers of migrants involved in an operation like Nick's are harder to pin down because there are no published estimates of how many illegal immigrants enter the UK through small ports, marinas and harbours. Nick told us he would carefully plan his trips to France around favourable tides and weather conditions - setting sail from Kent after dark. He would head for private marinas, yacht clubs and other discreet locations around Dunkirk to collect the Vietnamese migrants who had been driven from a Paris safehouse. He would normally smuggle four per trip, he would return back to Ramsgate in the early hours before it got light, he told us. The migrants would stay hidden inside the boat's cabin until the next evening, when one of the smuggling gang would collect them under the cover of there were occasions when he had to escape prying eyes, Nick recalled. For a time, he had to switch from Ramsgate to a different marina because one of the harbour staff told him there had been "foreigners" around his boat, having spotted some of the Vietnamese migrants. He managed to continue his ruse, however, for up to 18 months before being caught.A police unit tasked with tackling serious organised crime had been watching him and Matt for months. In late summer 2018, officers spotted Nick sail into view with four Vietnamese men in his boat. Nick was charged with conspiracy to facilitate the illegal entry of foreign nationals into the UK and later sentenced to eight years in the Vietnamese woman who had been paying him, got the same sentence. They both denied the charges, whereas Matt, the Albanian, pled guilty and was given a lesser sentence of five years and four months."I regret a lot of it, but I don't know that it would have ever been any different," said Nick, reflecting on his time in the people-smuggling trade."I think I was always out for self-destruction anyway."He was recently recalled to prison for breaching the terms of his licence. Matt and Lin, meanwhile, are both out of prison and living in the UK.
