Britain wants to smash the gangs — but what gangs?

Beatrice Tridimas, Reuters

LONDON: New British legislation designed to crack down on smuggling gangs the government blames for a surge in people crossing the Channel in flimsy inflatable boats will fail to deter people from trying, experts say. The Border Security and Asylum Immigration bill, due to be debated in parliament this month, includes measures to rein in organised crime gangs the interior minister, Yvette Cooper, has said are behind the often-deadly Channel crossings. But experts say the bill and anti-smuggling laws across Europe will not stem migration and often target the wrong people. They also drive people to take even more perilous journeys on their quest to reach European destinations. “If you want to stop people from being smuggled, you take a different approach, which is looking at the demands,” said Claire Healy, a researcher at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

“Refugees and migrants approach smugglers, and not vice versa, so the demand for mobility comes from refugees and migrants who do not have access to legal pathways,” she said. Research shows that counter-smuggling policies across Europe are yet to deter migrants from making illicit border crossings, with individuals or informal collaborators more likely to aid entry to Europe than transnational gangs. Immigration was one of the hot issues in last year’s British general election, which saw Labour leader Keir Starmer become prime minister. Now, his Labour Party is under pressure to lower the number of people crossing the Channel illegally.

Nearly 700 boats carrying more than 36,800 people crossed the Channel between France and Britain in 2024, a 25% increase compared to the year before, but fewer than the 45,791 who made the crossing in 2022. Cooper said Britain had “no alternative” but to go after the gangs.

“I strongly do not think that (expanding safe routes) is an alternative to going after the criminal gangs and the work that we need to do in law enforcement to prevent the small-boat crossings,” she said in December. The border security bill, introduced to parliament in January, abolishes the previous Conservative government’s plans to offshore asylum requests in Rwanda and establishes a Border Security Command tasked with coordinating national and international crime taskforces against illegal migration. Cooper said that over time the work of the command would expand, but its current priority was to stop the gangs.

Under the bill, anti-terror laws will be used for the first time to tackle immigration crime. The bill expands law enforcement powers to allow immigration and crime agencies to intervene in criminal operations sooner and makes the supply of materials used to facilitate illegal entry — like small boat parts — a criminal offence. The government is spending 150 million pounds ($188 million) on surveillance technology and hiring hundreds of National Crime Agency (NCA) investigators, who will work with border and immigration taskforces under the Border Security Command.

But multiple researchers across Europe and the United States, including Healy, have concluded that while migrant smugglers are diverse in their profiles and methods, they rarely operate on an organised, transnational scale. Smuggling facilitators are often migrants themselves and work alone or with ad hoc collaborators. Sometimes, they opt to drive boats to undercut the prices set by more organised groups, the researchers found. “Arresting and prosecuting (low-level actors) is going to have very little effect given that they’re very much replaceable, or not even smugglers at all, but migrants and refugees,” said Healy.

Britain’s 2022 Nationality and Borders Act, which made arrival without documentation and the facilitation of entry criminal offences, has failed to catch people involved in criminal networks, according to Oxford University researchers. Instead, hundreds of migrants and asylum seekers, some under the age of 18, or the victims of coercion and trafficking, have been arrested and imprisoned, the study found.

“Under this catch-all term of smashing the gangs, they’re justifying the imprisonment of a whole raft of other people,” said Victoria Taylor, author of the research. Britain’s taskforce for tackling immigration crime, or Project Invigor, has intercepted smuggling networks overseas, but law enforcement has had a short-term impact on organised crime business models, according to the NCA. It has resulted, instead, in the “diversification of supply routes and sourcing of small boat equipment”.

Several studies have found that smuggling networks have become more prevalent and expensive in response to European migration policies, while journeys have become more precarious. At least 82 people died on the Channel in 2024, according to the International Organisation for Migration, the most deaths recorded on the route in a single year. A January report by the Refugee Council stated that increased efforts to target smuggling gangs had made the route more dangerous, as more people cram onto each boat.

Cooper has also signed deals with Germany and Iraq to tighten national smuggling laws and work with local crime agencies to target gangs. In January, Britain’s foreign ministry announced that Tunisia would receive up to £5 million to help potential migrants learn new skills and find employment in their own countries. Britain will also supply Tunisian police with night vision goggles and drones to help combat smuggling at sea.

In October, Britain signed a G7 anti-migrant smuggling action plan to strengthen international cooperation for investigating criminal organisations.

Healy said joint investigations were important for targeting high-level actors, or those making the most profit from smuggling and exposing migrants to abuse and exploitation.

But safe, regular routes also needed to be created, she said, referencing a U.N. study, to be published later in February, that found legal protection offered to Ukrainians after the Russian invasion in 2022 resulted in limited levels of exploitation and trafficking. “When we talk about preventing irregular migration and smuggling, we don’t have that many successful examples to look at, and in this case, we can confidently say this prevented crime and abuse,” said Healy.