Starmer Plans to Treat People Smuggling Like Terrorism to Stop Illegal Immigration

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer giving a speech during the Interpol General Assembly, at the Scottish Event Campus in Glasgow, Scotland, on Nov. 4, 2024. Russell Cheyne/PA Wire

People smuggling should be viewed as a global security threat similar to terrorism, the prime minister said as he pledged to double the funding for his new Border Security Command.

Sir Keir Starmer told the Interpol General Assembly in Glasgow on Monday: “We’re going to treat people smugglers like terrorists. So we’re taking our approach to counter-terrorism—which we know works—and applying it to the gangs, with our new Border Security Command.”

To meet those ends, the prime minister announced that funding for the multi-agency command will be doubled to £150 million over the next two years.

Starmer said this would support the recruitment of hundreds of specialist investigators and intelligence officers and a new Organised Immigration Crime intelligence unit, all of which will be supported with new technology.

The prime minister also announced a further £58 million for the National Crime Agency which will support its intelligence and data analysis capabilities.

Global Response

Speaking to representatives from around 190 countries at the Interpol summit, the prime minister said that illegal immigration was a “massive driver of global insecurity” and stressed that tackling people smuggling required a “global response.”

For its part, the UK has been working with internal partners, “sharing intelligence and tactics,” Starmer said, adding that efforts to disrupt and intercept these networks include seizing the phones of criminals at the border and tracing wiring payments.

The prime minister said that work with international partners included working with Bulgaria to stop more than 100 small boats, used to facilitate illegal immigration across the English Channel, from getting to the French coast.

Other cooperation deals include agreement to increase intelligence sharing and dismantling smuggling routes with France and Italy, with Starmer working on a bilateral cooperation treaty with Germany.

Asylum System

Since winning the July 4 general election, Starmer has undone many of the Conservative government’s previous plans for dealing with illegal immigration and asylum, including the scheme to send asylum seekers who arrived illegally in the UK to Rwanda, which the Tories said acted as a deterrent to illegal immigration.

The new government also restarted processing the asylum claims of tens of thousands of asylum seekers who under the previous government were barred from claiming asylum because they had arrived across the English Channel by boat. The Refugee Council said that restarting claims processing could result in an additional 62,000 people being granted refugee status.

The prime minister said on Monday that along with tackling immigration crime, “we also need to rebuild our broken asylum system, process claims swiftly and humanely,” adding that the Home Office was recruiting hundreds of new staff to get through the asylum backlog.

Starmer also reiterated the UK would “never” withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights, which many Conservatives have said hinders Britain’s ability to effectively remove people who do not belong in the country.

The prime minister said, however, that his efforts have delivered results, telling Interpol members that 9,400 people with no legal right to be in the UK had been deported, with enforced returns up by almost a fifth on the same period last year and returns of foreign national offenders being up 14 percent.

Labour’s Reset

“This Labour government is resetting the UK’s whole approach to this challenge. No more gimmicks. No more gesture politics. No more irresponsible, undeliverable promises that almost by design seek conflict with other countries,” Starmer said, likely alluding to the previous administration’s pledge to “stop the boats” and the Rwanda plan, which he had previously called a gimmick.

Later asked if the government had an expectation of when illegal boat crossings—which topped 30,000 last week—would start to go down, the prime minister’s official spokesman said: “I am not going to set out new targets here today. You have got the manifesto commitment, you have got the prime minister’s words. Clearly the government’s ambition is to reduce small boats crossings and that is why we are putting significant resource focus into this crisis.”

A Conservative Party spokesperson said Starmer’s announcement on tackling smuggling gangs “will mean absolutely nothing without a deterrent to stop migrants wishing to make the dangerous journey across the Channel.”

“It is a shame that Starmer has not recognised the extent of the crisis in the Channel sooner, as he and the Labour Party voted against numerous measures to stop the gangs while they were in opposition,” the spokesperson added.

PA Media contributed to this report.