Former PM Rishi Sunak will always regret his rash pledge to stop the boats. On the face of it, Keir Starmer’s promise to smash the gangs doesn’t seem to be going so well either.
Yet the gangs are being smashed. Critics may wring their hands at 70,000 irregular migrants crossing the Channel since Labour came to power, but a lot more would have done if it hadn’t been for the National Crime Agency.
It is smashing gangs like a bull in a china shop, yet the shattered crockery does not seem to get the media coverage it should.
So far this month, two men have been jailed for 19 years each for running a people smuggling racket from a Caerphilly car wash, trafficking hundreds of migrants across Europe.
But getting the convictions required months of delicate surveillance. Gang smashing is not a game which can be played over a few hours like chess.
A lot of pawns have to be rounded up before cops can get their hands on the kings of the crime syndicates.
Last month, the NCA, working with French law enforcement, also nabbed two Vietnamese who came here by small boat and set themselves up as traffickers.
They advertised crossings on Facebook with mobile numbers to arrange them. Messages included: “Orders for you guys who want to enter Europe with a cheap price... you guys hurry and get a seat”.
One got 12 years and the other 10 years and six months at Croydon Crown Court.CPS prosecutor Hilary Ryan said: “Their operation was sophisticated and they stood to make hundreds of thousands of pounds.”
Undercover cops are smashing gangs. Why is the media ignoring the shattered crockery? - Nigel Nelson
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Another gang was smashed with two arrests in Britain and another 16 in Paris in simultaneous raids, and 41 migrants were discovered in hiding.
The NCA said: “The organised crime group is suspected of facilitating migrants on commercial airlines from Vietnam to central and eastern Europe, before onward journeys to France, after which they were moved to the UK on small boats and lorries.”
Romanian haulier Nicusor Lacatus, 43, was sentenced to six years for recruiting HGV drivers prepared to bring migrants into the country.
Iraqi Ramal Briem, 33, referred to his human cargo as “chickens”, telling an accomplice that “one chicken costs £1,500".
Currently, I have over 30 chickens in Dunkirk.” He was jailed for 10 years and is now awaiting extradition to France, where he is wanted for other offences.
NCA commander Saju Sasikumar said: “The language Ramal Briem used to describe people illustrates his complete disregard for human life. To him, migrants were nothing more than a commodity to trade.”
A tip off about a consignment of inner tubes entering Italy led to a joint NCA, French, German and Dutch operation involving 450 officers.
The equipment they found was enough to take 1,000 migrants across the Channel. The inner tubes were to be used as life jackets.
Ukrainians Vladyslav Cherniavskyi, 37, and Oleksandr Yavtushenko, 43, were intercepted by the NCA in their yacht Uforia off the Isle of Wight with five migrants on board.
The four Albanian men and a Vietnamese woman were less than euphoric at being caught having paid between £13,000 and £16,000 for the trip.
Their smugglers were given six and five years at Portsmouth Crown Court. This shows the NCA is doing what the PM asked of them.
What they are not doing is what Rishi Sunak asked them to do, and stop the boats entirely, because that is an impossible task.
No party has an answer to this, and those who say it is a simple matter of mass deportations, or leaving the ECHR, are a magical solution, are deluding both themselves and the rest of us.
And do not trust any politician who besmirches undercover officers doing a dangerous and difficult job, for they are at least attempting to do something about it.