Two Iraqi men have been arrested as part of an investigation into a criminal network smuggling migrants from the UK to France in lorries.
The UK’s National Crime Agency said a 41-year-old was arrested on Tuesday afternoon, following the arrest of another suspect, aged 42, on August 28. Both arrests took place in Ashford, Kent.
The arrests followed NCA officers spotting migrants near two men and a number of lorries at an industrial estate in the town.
While asylum seekers arriving by small boats across the English Channel has become a politically charged issue in Britain, there is also a lower-profile trade in smuggling migrants from the UK to France by ferry or Eurostar in lorries.
NCA Branch Commander Sara-Jayne Moore said: “This arrest is part of our ongoing investigation into a large-scale criminal network responsible for smuggling migrants from the UK to France, and in the other direction.
“People leaving the UK in lorries may be doing so because they are wanted by law enforcement, they may be trying to dodge French immigration checks, or they may be being trafficked or exploited.
“The risks to both the people being transported and to border security remains, regardless of the direction they are travelling in. The same crime groups smuggling people out of the country are often engaged in bringing people in too, so operations like this allow us to target their UK activities.”
Ms Moore said the investigation is one of 96 the crime agency is carrying out into gangs or individuals “operating at the top tier of organised immigration crime, which remains a priority for the NCA”.
Earlier this year, senior members of an Algerian-led crime gang who packed migrants into lorries to smuggle them from the UK to France were convicted in a British court following an NCA operation.
Footage filmed by a migrant inside a lorry showed it filled with 39 Algerians and Moroccans, including a six-year-old boy.
The people inside can be heard banging on the sides of the trailer, screaming, crying for help and shouting: “Open the door, open the door.”
Meanwhile, three migrants are thought to have been crushed to death and three others were missing in two separate incidents as they attempted to cross English Channel in small boats.
The deaths bring the number of fatalities this year linked to crossings in overcrowded dinghies to at least 23.
In one incident, a tugboat rescued a group of migrants off the coast of Sangatte in northern France at around 5am on Wednesday and took them to the port of Boulogne-sur-Mer.
Three dead people, believed to have been fatally crushed “at the bottom of the boat”, were discovered with the rescued migrants, a French official said. Three other people were hospitalised.
On Tuesday night, three migrants disappeared at sea during an attempt to cross the Channel from the town of Neufchatel-Hardelot, further along the coast.
