Hundreds of people have been detained in Northern Ireland as they attempted to cross into Britain during an operation designed to crack down on human traffickers, it has been disclosed.
Illegal migrants were said to have paid up to €8,000 to criminal gangs for illegal travel packages, which were sold as safer alternatives to crossing the English Channel in small boats. The interceptions in Northern Ireland have flowed from a UK Home Office campaign called Operation Comby launched in April, UK newspaper The Guardian reported on December 5.
People smugglers make use of the Common Travel Area (CTA), an open borders arrangement between the UK, Ireland and other British islands, which allows citizens of these jurisdictions to travel, live and work freely across these territories without requiring a passport or visa.
Operation Comby launched a three-day blitz in the week starting December 2. It led to arrests in Northern Ireland’s ports and airports, as well as in the English cities of Manchester and Liverpool, the Welsh town of Holyhead, and Cairnryan on the west coast of Scotland.
Four people trying to board boats or aircraft were detained in Belfast in Northern Ireland. One was an Iranian disguised as a Ukrainian who appeared to have gone from Spain’s Barcelona to Irish capital Dublin on a fake passport.
According to officials, the document was modified by criminals to appear to have passed through several previous border control checks, The Guardian reported.
Jonathan Evans, an inspector at the criminal and financial investigations unit in Belfast’s immigration enforcement, told the newspaper: “We will also probably put out a national alert to see if there have been any other Ukrainian counterfeit passports used and this could lead us to a new method used by organised criminals.”
“They are exploiting the common travel area in a way they didn’t before,” he said.
“This is all about pushing out the gangs.”
Keeping the invisible border between Northern Ireland and the South was a political red line during the Brexit talks. Ireland and the EU had to deal with Brexiteers who had demanded a hard border.
This was ultimately avoided through the Northern Ireland Protocol and subsequent Windsor Framework, which created a complex arrangement designed to prevent the creation of a physical border on the island of Ireland.
