26-05-2025
Meet Nick: ex-army, charming, funny, people-smuggler
There's an image you have of the people who smuggle desperate, vulnerable migrants into our country on boats, often with little thought for their safety. You think of them as shadowy figures, operating in gangs, most probably from other countries. You despise them for profiting from human misery.
I had that image too, until a year ago, when I met Nick*. He is a man who, like me, is in his early forties, grew up comfortably in the Home Counties, has a child, and who I discovered over a year of talking to him, is charming, funny, likable, even. Unlike me, however, Nick was a people-smuggler who had brought dozens of migrants into the UK illegally. 'People coming to this country was making me successful,' he boasted.
