The National Crime Agency (NCA) has arrested a 30-year-old Albanian in London who is suspected of trafficking people across the English Channel from France in small, inflatable boats.
The man, who has not been identified, was arrested in the suburb of Surbiton in southwest London during a dawn raid on Friday morning.
Braverman said people who “deliberately enter the United Kingdom illegally from a safe country” would be sent back to their home country or relocated to Rwanda, and she said there would be a blanket ban on political asylum claims for people who came across the Channel.
In a statement, the NCA said the man arrested in Surbiton was “suspected of involvement in an Albanian organised crime group co-ordinating the movements of migrants from France to the UK on small boats.”
It said his home was searched and NCA officers seized cash, mobile phones, and a computer tablet.
He is being questioned on suspicion of facilitating illegal immigration.
According to Home Office figures, the number of people smuggled into the UK on small boats has soared in recent years, with 28,526 people detected in 2021, compared to 8,466 in 2020, 1,843 in 2019, and 299 in 2018.
‘These Networks ... Exploit Them for Profit’
In August, Albanian journalist Muhamed Veliu told The Epoch Times Kurdish gangs controlled most of the people trafficking from France to Britain, and Albanians were “middlemen” whose primary job was to recruit passengers and for which they received a commission.The NCA’s Regional Head of Investigation Jacque Beer said: “Attempts to reach the UK by small boat are incredibly dangerous, and we know a high percentage are facilitated by organised criminal networks of varying sophistication. These networks do not care about the safety or security of those they transport, they seek to exploit them for profit.”
He added, “We believe today’s operation will have disrupted the activity of one such network.”
The NCA says it has 60 ongoing investigations into human-trafficking networks.
