Hundreds of people have been detained in Northern Ireland trying to get into Britain after crossing the Border, immigration officials have said.
Criminal gangs are, they said, charging up to €8,000 for illegal travel packages that they present as a safer option than crossing the English Channel from France on small boats.
The interceptions in Northern Ireland have arisen from a UK home office campaign called Operation Comby, which began last April. It is an intensification of the routine immigration Operation Gull, a long-standing joint effort with An Garda Síochána to stamp out abuse of the Common Travel Area (CTA).
The CTA allows British and Irish citizens to travel without passports between Ireland, Britain, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. It has previously been claimed that irregular migrants are using Belfast as a back door into the Republic.
A three-day 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 (€6,000) in cash, a car and two sets of forged documents, the UK home office said.
Led by the UK’s immigration enforcement criminal and financial investigations team, in partnership with the Police Service of Northern Ireland and the Garda, the operation involved officers in the ports and airports of Northern Ireland, Manchester, Liverpool, Holyhead and Cairnryan.
UK home office officials detained four people trying to board ferries or aircraft in Belfast on Tuesday. 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 CTA as a back door to 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 had been 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.
UK border security minister Angela Eagle said: “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.”
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 Minister for Justice Helen McEntee said there was anecdotal evidence that the sharp rise in the numbers seeking international protection were entering via Northern Ireland.
The number of asylum applications in the State has risen from just under 5,000 in 2019 to more than 17,536 so far this year, according to official data.
Maintaining the invisible Border between Northern Ireland and the Republic was a political red line during the Brexit negotiations, with Ireland and the European Union facing down Brexiteers who wanted a hard border.
Mr Evans said there was evidence that people-smuggling gangs were now also targeting Dublin as a back door to the UK as an alternative to crossing the English Channel on small boats.
“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,” he said.
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,” Mr Evans added.
The Garda National Immigration Bureau (GNIB) said in a statement on Thursday night: “A lot of people who illegally enter Ireland are exploited and this operation [Comby] is focused on protecting vulnerable people and bringing crime gangs involved in people smuggling and exploitation to justice.
“The Common Travel Area provides important privileges to the citizens of Ireland and the UK, but it also presents challenges to policing and immigration enforcement in both jurisdictions, with organised criminals seeking to exploit these privileges,” Gda Det Chief Supt Aidan Minnock, head of the GNIB, said.
“I am delighted to say that in combating these challenges and targeting organised criminals, that An Garda Síochána, the home office and the PSNI have excellent partnerships, with strong working relationships.
“These organised crime gangs do not recognise borders, so it is vital that immigration enforcement agencies work in cohesion to ensure the border is not an obstacle to policing, but rather works to our advantage as we combine forces in our shared objectives to disrupt organised criminals, maintain the integrity of the Common Travel Area and protect vulnerable persons in society.
“The last three days of action on Operation Comby is an example of how our shared efforts can disrupt criminality, with 35 persons arrested, €6,000 of criminal cash, a car and fraudulent identity documents seized.” – Guardian
