A smuggling gang has allegedly been caught trying to take migrants out of the UK to France. Five people were arrested in a major police operation, including three taxi drivers. Surveillance teams from the National Crime Agency (NCA) tracked taxis driven from London to a location near Whitstable, Kent, earlier this week.
Twenty-three people were then loaded onto a lorry which was later stopped by officers as it approached the Port of Dover. In total, 23 Bangladeshi nationals were taken off the vehicle. NCA branch commander Saju Sasikumar said: “This operation has been the culmination of an investigation that has been ongoing for a number of months.”
Sasikumar added: “Organised crime groups involved in people smuggling risk the safety of those they transport and also threaten the border security of both the UK and France.”
The NCA said of the five people initially detained one was arrested for immigration offences, but the rest were found to be in the UK legally and released.
Three taxi drivers, men aged between 43 and 55, were all separately arrested on suspicion of facilitating illegal immigration, along with the 32-year-old Romanian lorry driver.
The suspected ringleader of the network, a man aged 43, was also arrested in New Cross, south London. About £30,000 cash was also seized from a property.
Officers from Scotland Yard, Kent Police and Port of Dover Police also took part in the operation. Pictures issued by the NCA show a number of men crouched on top of stacks of blue pallets in the back of the vehicle.
The criminal gang are alleged to have been involved in a number of attempts to move predominantly Pakistani and Bangladeshi nationals out of the UK in lorries, in an attempt to avoid border controls and French entry restrictions.
All five were subsequently charged with conspiring to facilitate illegal immigration and were due to appear at magistrates’ courts in the Kent and south east London on Wednesday (January 28).
NCA branch commander Sasikumar said: “Tackling organised immigration crime remains a top priority for the NCA and this investigation is one of around 100 ongoing investigations into networks or individuals in the top tier of this type of criminality.”
The NCA has issued a warning criminal gangs are actively recruiting HGV drivers to smuggle migrants both into and out of the UK.
It followed a spike in arrests in Kent, which has seen a number of drivers detained making bids to board trains or ferries to France while carrying people illegally in their vehicles.
People smugglers are also known to be targeting drivers, offering them thousands of pounds to transport people across the border in otherwise legitimate loads.
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