Anglo-Spanish Police Operation Smashes Albanian People Trafficking Gang

A man is arrested by the Guardia Civil and the National Crime Agency in Madrid, Spain, on Oct. 4, 2022. National Crime Agency

A joint operation between Britain’s National Crime Agency (NCA) and the Guardia Civil in Spain has led to the arrest of seven men from an Albanian organised crime group who were allegedly involved in smuggling illegal immigrants into the UK on board freight lorries.

The NCA said the gang brought in around 50 illegal immigrants—mainly Albanians—on ferries between the Spanish ports of Bilbao and Santander and Portsmouth, Southampton, and Liverpool in England.

Some of the Albanians had flown directly to Spain from Tirana, while other illegal immigrants had been found and recruited in camps near Bilbao and Santander.

The Spanish prosecutors said the fee charged was between 3,000 ($2,900) and 15,000 euros ($14,500) and the gang provided the illegal immigrants with food and accommodation before smuggling them on board the ferries in the back of lorries.

Seven arrests were made—two in Madrid and the rest in the Basque country—between Oct. 3 and 5, but the details only emerged on Monday.

The Guardia Civil seized several mobile phones, computers, bank cards, and passports which may be crucial to the investigation.

Dangers of Smuggling People in Lorries Are ‘Self-Evident’

NCA International Regional Manager Steve Reynolds said, “We were faced with a crime group who were prepared to smuggle migrants in lorries over one of the longer ferry and freight crossings into the UK.”

“The dangers of that are self-evident,” he said, in a veiled reference to the 39 Vietnamese illegal immigrants who suffocated and died in October 2019 in the back of a lorry bringing them into England from Belgium.

Reynolds said, “Working closely with our Spanish counterparts we have been able to dismantle their operation and prevent further lives being put at risk.”

“This operation demonstrates how the NCA is determined to take action against people smugglers at every step of the route towards the UK, including upstream in transit countries like Spain,” he added.

The seven who were arrested, who include the alleged ringleader, will all face trial in Spain.

When the pandemic began and international freight traffic fell, people traffickers switched to bringing people across the English Channel in boats, but the resumption of trade has seen a gradual resumption in the smuggling of people on board trucks.

Graham Hancock, who leads the Invigor UK Organised Immigration Crime Taskforce, added, “Organised immigration crime is something which is constantly evolving, and we are always alive to the changes in the threat, whether that be different routes or methods used by the criminal networks involved.”

Albania is a key source of illegal immigrants heading to England and on Oct. 7, an Albanian man was arrested in London in connection with the trafficking of people in small boats across the English Channel.