New deals between the UK and its overseas partners aim to increase intelligence sharing and aid the interception of criminal smuggling gangs.
More than 20,000 illegal immigrants have crossed the English Channel to Britain since Sir Keir Starmer assumed government leadership in July, official data suggest.
Some 20,110 immigrants have been intercepted crossing the Channel in the first five months of the Labour government, the Home Office said on Monday.
According to small boat arrival figures, November accounted for 2,901 crossings, up from 1,661 in the same month last year.
Meanwhile, the first day of December saw 122 immigrants cross the Channel to the UK.
The total number of immigrants to arrive so far this year totals 33,684, an increase from 28,360 at the same time last year and a drop from 44,011 in 2022.
The Home Office has vowed to tackle the illegal immigration crisis that has so far seen a total of 148,006 immigrants arrive in Britain by boat across the Channel since 2018, when records began.
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A Home Office spokesperson said on Monday: “We all want to end dangerous small boat crossings, which threaten lives and undermine our border security.
“The people-smuggling gangs do not care if the vulnerable people they exploit live or die, as long as they pay. We will stop at nothing to dismantle their business models and bring them to justice.”
The UK’s new Border Security Command (BSC) is part of the government’s national security strategy. It aims to tackle people-smuggling gangs, which are often behind the illegal crossings across the English Channel.
Labour plans to invest £150 million in the BSC over the next two years, to crack down on traffickers and organised crime.
The cash boost will be used to hire hundreds of new investigators and intelligence officers. It will also support the use of data and tech to break down smuggling networks working across Europe.
UK–Iraq Deal
Speaking on migration at Downing Street last week, Starmer said Labour had inherited an “utter mess” in the Home Office and vowed to “turn things around.”
He welcomed the newly-launched UK–Iraq security agreement, delivered by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper after her visit to Iraq and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) last week.
Smuggling networks operating out of Iraq, including the KRI and Europe, are behind illegal migration and trafficking, including across the Channel to the UK.
Cooper committed up to £300,000 for Iraq law enforcement training in border security. She set aside £200,000 to support irregular migration and border security projects in the KRI, including a new taskforce.
The two countries have also agreed to work on the returns of illegal immigrants arriving in Britain.
“These landmark commitments between the UK government and Iraq and the KRI send a clear signal to the criminal smuggling gangs that we are determined to work across the globe to go after them.
“There are smuggler gangs profiting from dangerous small boat crossings whose operations stretch back through northern France, Germany, across Europe, to the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and beyond. Organised criminals operate across borders, so law enforcement needs to operate across borders too,” Cooper said.
Asylum Cases
Starmer has also pledged to continue processing asylum returns. In the year to September, the Home Office carried out 7,708 enforced returns, an increase of 41 percent on the previous year.
More than 102,000 people received an initial decision by the Home Office on their asylum claims, almost double the previous year’s figure.
At the end of September, there were 22 percent fewer asylum cases awaiting an initial decision than at the end of September 2023.
However, the Home Office said that while the number is lower than the peak at the end of June last year, it is still higher than before 2022.
Starmer acknowledged that fixing border security “won’t be quick or easy,” but vowed to deliver change for the British people.
Britain’s new agreements with Serbia, North Macedonia, and Kosovo, signed earlier in November, aim to increase intelligence sharing to intercept the gangs as they transport vulnerable people through the Western Balkans.
In December, the UK government will host the Calais Group with Germany in London. British and German interior ministers will be joined by their counterparts from France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, as well as law enforcement including the National Crime Agency, Europol, and Frontex.
