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The UK government is tightening its screw on those people-smuggling gangs who not only take money from migrants looking to enter the UK illegally but also put their lives in danger. These gangs have established their network and business model over the years. They bring innocent and vulnerable people through the English Channel in small and unsafe boats or on the backs of lorries.
Border Security, Asylum, and Immigration Bill
In an ongoing effort to prevent people smuggling gangs’ operations, the UK government introduced the Border Security, Asylum, and Immigration Bill to the House of Commons on 30 January 2025. The bill included provisions about the UK’s border security. The objective of the bill is to go after the immigration crime groups harder than ever before. More power and new and unprecedented tools will be given to the border officials and law enforcement agencies to combat the human trafficking operators.
The bill aims to prevent and penalize people-smuggling gangs involved in organized immigration crime at quite an early stage. Their modus operandi is aimed to be busted. For the first time, the tools that are usually reserved for countering terrorism will be used to combat these gangs. The legislation will enable the National Crime Agency (NCA), the police, and other law enforcement agencies to use counter-terror-style tactics regarding surveillance, pre-crime policing, and sentencing against people smuggling gangs.
The new laws have been positively received by law enforcement agencies like the National Crime Agency (NCA), Immigration Enforcement, and police.
What does the bill include?
To make UK borders safer than ever before, new measures will be taken against organized immigration crime groups who don’t care about the lives of vulnerable people looking to enter the UK border. The only thing they care about is the money they are paid to make people enter the UK illegally. They put people in the backs of lorries or very small and unsafe boats from the French sea (this has created tension between the UK and France) in which they coercively make reluctant passengers board the boat even during the extremely harsh cold weather. Several people die every year in their attempts to enter the UK in these small boats in hostile conditions.
The new laws include the new transformative measures as follows:
- The new law includes that those involved in physical aggression, intimidation, or coercive behavior endangering another life at sea will face prosecution and an increased sentence of up to 5 years in prison.
- The immigration officials and police will have the power to seize, search, and retain mobile phones, laptops, and other electronic devices of migrants before arresting them to investigate and establish their links with those involved in helping them enter the UK illegally.
- The officials will be able to arrest those involved in making illegal immigration arrangements at an early stage in order to prevent smuggling.
- A new offense will be created against the people suspected of supplying or offering to supply items such as buying, selling, and transporting small boat parts for use in the English Channel and supplying forged ID documents. If convicted, they will face a jail term of up to 14 years.
- A new offense will be created for collecting information to be used by organized immigration criminals to prepare for boat crossings. This information includes arranging departure points, dates, and times, with clear links back to the gangs facilitating the dangerous crossing.
- A new offense will be created for making, adapting, importing, and possessing specific articles that could be used in serious crime. These articles include templates for 3D-printed firearms, pill presses, vehicle concealments, and so on. Such acts will carry a prison sentence of up to 5 years.
- Taking inspiration from counter-terrorism tools, the same will be applied where court orders will ban illegal immigration suspects from traveling, internet or phone use, promoting smuggling on social media before they are arrested, ensuring that court delays do not mean a gap in agencies taking action.
Conclusion
These measures are supposed to strengthen the response system across partners and law enforcement agencies to work in tandem to crack down on the people smuggling gangs. The new legislation will give law enforcement stronger tools to abolish the gangs.
The new bill also aims to give asylum to eligible seekers and simultaneously punish the handlers of illegal immigration into the UK.
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