Germany launches first raids on Channel migrant smuggling network

New law finally targets gangs supplying boats to Britain

Germany has carried out its first raids under a new law specifically designed to crack down on criminal gangs supplying equipment for illegal small-boat crossings to Britain.

Police seized more than 9,000 life jackets, dozens of inflatable dinghies, engines and 360 pumps during a joint operation involving German, British and French authorities in North Rhine-Westphalia.

The scale of the haul gives a glimpse into the industrial operation behind the Channel crossings. Britain's National Crime Agency estimates the seized boats and equipment could have been used to transport more than 2,000 migrants across the English Channel.

The equipment is now being held at a secret police storage facility in western Germany, where investigators showed the BBC the seized material.

Germany becomes a key link in the supply chain

Criminal gangs have for years used garages, warehouses and other premises in western Germany to store boats and equipment before moving them towards northern France, where many of the crossings begin.

Germany became an increasingly important staging post after Brexit exposed a gap in the country's anti-smuggling laws.

Previously, key German legislation was largely designed around the European Union's free-movement area and did not clearly cover the movement of migrants towards Britain, which was now a third country.

Berlin changed the law last December, specifically making it a criminal offence to facilitate migrant smuggling to the UK.

Germany's Interior Ministry has confirmed that these raids represent the first enforcement action under the new provision.

Thousands of life jackets — but little protection

Among the seized equipment are brightly coloured life jackets packed tightly into plastic wrapping.

Officials say some of the inflatable boats are around 9 metres long, with many of them still packed inside cardboard boxes.

The life jackets themselves appear particularly disturbing. Investigators say they contain little more than foam and would offer extremely limited protection in the dangerous and unpredictable waters of the Channel.

Much of the equipment appears to originate in China, with supplies commonly transported into Europe through Turkey.

The international nature of the operation was underlined when Turkish and Bulgarian customs officials recently discovered 20 undeclared inflatable dinghies hidden among mattress pads in a truck heading towards Germany.

Criminal gangs are adapting

British investigators believe Kurdish criminal networks have gained significant control over the small-boat supply business in western Germany.

The region offers the gangs an ideal base. Many of those involved live there, while the area is close enough to northern France to move equipment towards the launch beaches without operating directly in one of Europe's most heavily patrolled coastal areas.

But investigators warn that disrupting the supply chain does not necessarily make the criminal business disappear.

Instead, the gangs are adapting.

The appearance of huge "mega-dinghies" capable of carrying substantially larger numbers of people is one example of how smugglers are attempting to maximise their profits while facing greater pressure from European authorities.

Oxford's Migration Observatory has suggested that increased enforcement may actually create an incentive for smugglers to pack as many people as possible onto each available boat.

Britain says crackdown is working

The new German action forms part of wider cooperation between Britain, France and Germany aimed at attacking the smuggling networks before migrants reach the French coast.

The British government says the strategy is beginning to produce results.

Home Office figures show that the number of people crossing the Channel between 1 January and 8 August this year was around 43% lower than during the same period last year.

Ministers attribute the reduction partly to efforts to disrupt the supply of boats and equipment and increased law-enforcement activity on French beaches.

But critics argue that the government is taking too much credit, pointing instead to weather and sea conditions as the principal reason for the decline.

A new front in the Channel battle

Whatever the explanation for this year's lower crossing numbers, the German raids expose a crucial part of the smuggling operation that is normally far from public view.

The Channel crisis does not begin when an overloaded dinghy reaches the French coast.

It begins much earlier — with boats being manufactured, transported, stored, assembled and supplied to criminal gangs.

For the first time, Germany's police now have a law specifically allowing them to pursue those operating that supply chain for Britain.

Whether the new legislation can deliver sustained prosecutions remains uncertain. German prosecutors acknowledge that the provision is still largely untested.

But the message from Berlin is clear: the gangs supplying Britain's small-boat crisis can no longer assume that Germany is simply a convenient warehouse on the road to the Channel.

SOURCE