Police arrest Channel migrant smuggling ring in dawn raids across Germany
One of the most active rings of human traffickers smuggling tens of thousands of migrants across the English Channel in small boats has been busted in a major raid.
Almost 1,000 police officers, including the elite GSG9 special forces were involved in a series of spectacular dawn raids across Germany.
The large-scale operation, which was a year and a half in the planning and involved Belgian and French law enforcement, targeted an Iraqi-Kurdish network of people smugglers, Europol said.
The gang is suspected of taking illegal migrants from the Middle East and East Africa to France and the UK in “low-quality inflatable boats”, the EU’s law enforcement agency, which coordinated the operation, said.
Raids were carried out at houses and storage spaces in four of Germany’s regional states on Wednesday morning in an operation involving French and Belgian law enforcement.
Officers swooped in the states of Hesse, Bavaria, Schleswig-Holstein and North Rhine-Westphalia. In North Rhine-Westphalia alone, where the operation was centred, about 900 police were involved.
More than 28 properties were searched in the cities of Cologne, Detmold and Bergischen-Gladbach, with 25 suspects detained under European arrest warrants by armed police.
Europol said more than 15 individuals were arrested under Belgian and French judicial orders but refused to give further details until later on Thursday.
The network is suspected of being involved in the procurement of boats to cross the English Channel. As a measure against smuggling to the UK, the regulations on the purchase of certain boats and boat engines had been tightened in the north of France.
The raid is understood to be connected to a Europol operation in 2022 after a cross-border operation in five European countries, including Germany.
Dozens of small boats used by smugglers as well as large amounts of cash and firearms were confiscated from a farm in Lower Saxony in 2022.
The news will be welcome to Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, who has vowed to “stop the boats” in a bid to boost his flagging poll ratings ahead of an election this year.
Mr Sunak has used improved UK-EU relations after the new Brexit deal for Northern Ireland to secure deals on migration with France and an intelligence-sharing agreement with Frontex, the EU’s border agency.
In January, Frontex said that there had been 3,168 illegal exits from the EU towards the UK across the Channel. This was a 4 per cent drop from December 2023. Most of the migrants were from Iran, Afghanistan or an unknown country, the EU border guard said.
Meanwhile, Italian police said on Wednesday they had arrested 12 suspected human traffickers for allegedly organising high-speed transfers for at least 73 illegal migrants from Tunisia to Europe.
Expert pilots operated the speed boats crossing from Tunisia to Marsala in Sicily between June and September last year, police said, describing them as “VIP trips”.
The traffickers transferred relatively small groups of up to 20 people on each of four trips, charging fees of up to 6,000 euros (£5,138) per person.
The trip, on a crowded and less seaworthy vessel, would normally cost under 1,000 euros per migrant.
Six Tunisians and six Italians were detained as part of an investigation coordinated by Europol and the Italian anti-mafia police unit.
The investigators identified a Tunisian former police officer as the head of the trafficking organisation.
Italy and other European governments have taken an increasingly hard line on immigration in recent years amid a surge of arrivals of asylum seekers and undocumented migrants.
EU data shows fewer than 100,000 irregular migrants made to it Europe in 2020, but that rose to 250,000 last year.
