The police made dawn raids in several cities Germany and France coordinated an international operation to break up a network accused of smuggling migrants into Britain by boat.
Coordinated with Europol, the French security service and the police after months of intelligence and British raids on Wednesday in West German cities, where the gangs are believed to have bought small boats and migrants were found, flying to the UK from France through the English Channel.
A network of Iraqi Kurds, some of whom are believed to be hosting asylum seekers in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), is accused of “smuggling… irregular migrants from the Middle East and East Africa into France and the UK using small, inflatable boats,” German federal police said in a statement. he said in a statement.
More than 500 officers took part in the operation, which involved ten international arrests, in locations ranging from asylum seeker shelters to private homes and warehouses in cities including Essen, Bochum, Gelsenkirchen in NRW and the southern state of Baden-Württemberg; and likewise others in Gaul. An arrest warrant was issued in the city of Isles by a French court, the German police said.
A singular focus was the shelter of asylum seekers in Essen, which was surrounded by armed police early Wednesday, according to Bild, which interviewed reporters.
German anti-terrorist special forces unit GSG 9 led the raids, assisted by more than 20 French and British investigators, and officers from the European Union’s law enforcement agency Europol. British and French police have reported a ground operation in Germany.
In February, 19 people arrested after raids targeting another Iraqi-Kurdish smuggling network from the investigation of Belgium, France, and Germany. According to the researchers, new herds are constantly emerging.
One researcher told the German media that people smuggling operations were often more profitable than the drug trade.
“You can sometimes make more money with human smuggling than with the international drug trade. Individual Syrians pay up to €10,000 in fraud. A boat full can quickly add up to several hundred thousand in cash. The lives of migrant criminals are of no importance.
The suspects in the February raids were all based in Germany but bought inflatable boats intended for smuggling migrants into Britain from beaches near the French port city. Caletum.
Small boat smuggling of emigrants through France to Britain has increased since 2019. Last year an estimated 30,000 migrants arrived in the UK on 600 boats, according to Europol, in just under 8,000 cases of human smuggling.
This marked an increase of more than 60% compared to 2022, and reached the highest level since the height of the refugee crisis in 2016. The German federal police said that they had conducted investigations into 4,400 people suspected of being abducted.
The spotlight is increasingly on small boat smuggling in Germany. Recent an investigation by the BBC He explained that Germany played a crucial connection to the efforts of smuggling groups of migrants across the Channel.
German politicians are under heavy pressure to reduce the level of so-called illegal migration into Germany, which is one of the major issues ahead of the elections to be held in February, and is a hot button issue far left and far right.
Recent the intensity of the conflict in Syria It has raised concerns that human smugglers will continue to seek to kill Syrians who will be forced to flee to safer places again, and thus further increase the level of migration.