Hundreds detained in Northern Ireland in crackdown on people smugglers

Hundreds of people have been detained in Northern Ireland trying to get into Great Britain by crossing the border from Ireland in an operation aimed at cracking down on people smugglers.

Criminal gangs are charging up to €8,000 for the illegal travel package they present as a safer route to crossing the Channel on small boats , say immigration officials.

The interceptions in Northern Ireland have flowed from a UK Home Office campaign called Operation Comby launched last April as an intensification of the routine immigration intelligence-led Operation Gull, a longstanding joint effort with the Garda Siochána in the Irish republic to stamp out abuse of the common travel area (CTA).

The border security minister, Angela Eagle, said the UK government was taking the fight against people smugglers to “every border”.

“Driven by greed, these gangs have no regard for human life or safety, charging outrageous fees, preying on those desperate to escape hardship, and forcing them into illegal and dangerous situations,” she said.

The CTA allows British and Irish citizens only to travel without passports between the islands of Ireland, Great Britain, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands but it has become the subject of controversy in Ireland over allegations that irregular migrants are using Belfast as a backdoor to the republic.

A three-day Comby operation focusing on travel in the other direction this week led to 35 arrests in Ireland and the UK and the seizure of £5,000 criminal cash, a car and two sets of forged documents, the Home Office said.

Let by the UK’s immigration enforcement criminal and financial investigations team, in partnership with the Police Service of Northern Ireland and the Garda, it involved officers in the ports and airports of Northern Ireland, Manchester, Liverpool, Holyhead and Cairnryan.

On Tuesday, Home Office officials detained four individuals trying to board ferries or planes in Belfast. One was an Iranian who appeared to have travelled from Barcelona to Dublin posing as a Ukrainian.

He was stopped by two immigration enforcement officials as he approached the boarding card turnstiles at Belfast airport.

Within minutes, the officers suspected his Ukrainian passport was counterfeit and he admitted to being Iranian.

Officers said the detention could be “low hanging fruit” that led to a potential smuggling gang in Dublin or elsewhere in Europe using the common travel area as a back door to Great Britain.

Jonathan Evans, the inspector at the criminal and financial investigations unit in immigration enforcement in Belfast, said the numerous stamps in the man’s passport were designed to make it look like he was well-travelled.

This suggested the document had been prepared by a criminal gang “to make it look like he has gone through multiple border controls previously” with immigration stamps from other countries.

He added: “We will now run his fingerprints through our databases and talk to Europol,” the officer said. “We will also probably put out a national alert to see if there have been any other Ukrainian counterfeit passports been used and this could lead us to a new method used by organised criminals.”

The surge in the number of asylum seekers going the other direction from Britain to Belfast and then Dublin was the centre of a political row in Ireland earlier this year after the justice minister, Helen McEntee, said there was anecdotal evidence the sharp rise in the number of those seeking international protection were entering the country via Northern Ireland.

Maintaining the invisible border between Northern Ireland and the republic was a political red line during the Brexit negotiations. Ireland and the EU faced down Brexiters who wanted a hard border.

Asylum applications in Ireland have jumped from just under 5,000 in 2019 to more than 17,536 so far this year, according to Irish government data.

Evans say there is evidence that people-smuggling gangs are now also targeting Dublin as a backdoor to the UK as a VIP alternative to small boats across the channel.

Two previous Comby exercises this year resulted in 59 arrests, 12 people detained as part of criminal investigations into suspected people-smuggling, the seizure of forged passports and €430,000 in cash.

Among the nationalities that have used Ireland as a “backdoor” are Syrians and Bedoonis, a stateless Arab minority in Kuwait, and other European nationals who have had what Evans calls “adverse” immigration decisions in Great Britain.

“They are exploiting the common travel area in a way they didn’t before. So what is happening now is that we are using this kind of overt approach of Comby to raise public awareness. This is all about pushing out the gangs,” said Evans.

Debriefing from people desperate enough to pay the gangs to get to Belfast from Dublin show they charge “between €5,000 and €8,000 for the flight from Europe, counterfeit documents, the trip to Belfast and for the ticket to wherever their destination is in the UK”.

“It might cost the gangs €1,000 all in. It is a lucrative business,” Evans said.