Hundreds of people were detained in Severen Ireland trying to enter Britain by crossing the border from Ireland in an operation aimed at cracking down on people smugglers.
Criminal gangs are charging up to €8,000 for an illegal tour package they pass off as a safer route to cross the English Channel in small boats, immigration officials say.
The interceptions in Northern Ireland stem from a UK Home Office campaign called Operation Comby, launched last April to strengthen routine immigration enforcement by Operation Gull, a long-standing joint effort with the Garda Siochána in the Republic of Ireland to stamp out the abuse of common travel area (CTA).
The CTA allows British and Irish citizens to travel passport-free only between the islands of Ireland, Great Britain, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands, but has become the subject of controversy in Ireland over claims that illegal migrants are using Belfast as a back entrance to the Republic.
A three-day Comby operation focused on traveling in the other direction this week led to multiple arrests, the Home Office said. It involved officers at ports and airports in Northern Ireland, Manchester, Liverpool, Holyhead and Cairnryan.
On Tuesday, Home Office officers detained four people trying to board ferries or planes in Belfast. One is an Iranian who appears to have traveled from Barcelona to Dublin posing as a Ukrainian.
He was stopped by two immigration officers as he approached the boarding pass turnstiles at Belfast Airport.
After a few minutes, the police suspected that his Ukrainian passport was fake and he admitted that he was Iranian.
Officers said the arrest could be “low-hanging fruit” that led to a potential smuggling ring in Dublin or elsewhere in Europe using the common travel area as a back door to Britain.
Jonathan Evans, an inspector in the criminal and financial investigations unit at immigration services in Belfast, said the numerous stamps in the man’s passport were intended to make it look like he was well-travelled.
It suggested that the document was prepared by a criminal gang “to make it appear that he had passed multiple border checks beforehand” with immigration stamps from other countries.
He added: “We will now check his fingerprints against our databases and speak to Europol,” the officer said. “We are also likely to send out a national alert to see if other Ukrainian fake passports have been used and this may lead us to a new method being used by organized criminals.”
The rise in the number of asylum seekers going the other way from Britain to Belfast and then Dublin was at the center of a political row in Ireland earlier this year after Justice Secretary Helen McEntee said there was anecdotal evidence of a sharp increase in number of those seeking international protection entered the country through Northern Ireland.
Maintaining the invisible border between Northern Ireland and the Republic was a political red line during the Brexit negotiations. Ireland and the EU clashed with Brexiteers who wanted a hard border.
Asylum claims in Ireland have jumped from just under 5,000 in 2019. to more than 17,536 so far this year, according to Irish government figures.
Evans says there is evidence that people-smuggling gangs are now also targeting Dublin as a back door to the UK as a VIP alternative to small canal boats.
Among the nationalities who have used Ireland as a “backdoor” are Syrians and Bedouins, a stateless Arab minority in Kuwait and other European nationals who have had what Evans calls “adverse” immigration decisions in Britain.
“They’re exploiting the common travel area in a way they haven’t before. So what’s happening now is we’re using this kind of overt Comby approach to raise public awareness. It’s all about pushing the gangs out,” Evans said.
An analysis of people desperate enough to pay the gangs to get to Belfast from Dublin shows they charge “between €5,000 and €8,000 for a flight from Europe, false documents, the journey to Belfast and the ticket to wherever the destination them in the United Kingdom”.
“This could cost the gangs €1,000 in total. It’s a lucrative business,” Evans said.
