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August 20, 2015 5:22 pm
Calais gangs cash in on migrants’ desperation to reach UK
Michael Stothard in Calais
False papers, fake compartments and hotel rooms all on offer
The gangs of Calais come from countries as far away as Eritrea,
Afghanistan, Iraq and Vietnam, all drawn by the promise of money.
French police say the various criminal groups can earn as much as €4m
a year organising the passage for migrants desperate to flee the
squalid camps of the “jungle” and start a new life in the UK. “I am
trying to get my relatives to pay [for their services],” says
Mohammed, a 23-year-old from Sudan who has been trying every day to
make the dangerous journey by himself, so far without success. “I need
to leave this place.”
This year the police have broken up 19 trafficking networks, which
charge migrants anywhere from €500 to €20,000 a trip depending on the
level of the service, which can involve providing false documents and
hotel rooms. The fact that only six were dismantled in the first half
of 2014 shows how the problem is increasing — and police say it is
getting worse.
This month they smashed an Albanian gang that had made up to €2m off
about 250 migrants in six months.
As Europe’s immigration crisis deepens, so the number in the Calais
“jungle” has swollen, from 800 last year to as much as 5,000, with
many of its inhabitants refugees from conflicts in Africa and the
Middle East.
The French and British governments have announced a new command centre
in Calais to target organised gangs as well as plans to increase
security around the Channel tunnel. But interviews with police and
migrants in Calais have highlighted the challenge the authorities
face, given the market for passage to the UK and the gangs’ ability to
change tactics fast.
The gangs, grouped loosely by nationality, offer different levels of
service, from fixed-price contracts — with repeat attempts included in
the price — and ingenious hiding places, to trusting to pure luck.
By far the most popular strategy is to take control of a hauliers’
rest stop in the Calais region or further along the E40 motorway, with
or without the complicity of the driver, to load on migrants.
One Afghan network dismantled in April, for example, took over a car
park of a petrol station in Calais near the jungle camp. From 6pm to
4am, Afghans took about €600 from migrants to put them in the trailer.
The migrants are sometimes told to simply hide behind whatever is in
the back. But there are more sophisticated operations, often carried
out by the Albanian gangs, who build false walls.
Police do not have the manpower to hand-search every single vehicle
going to the UK. Existing delays from tough security measures were
costing UK hauliers £750,000 a day when the crisis escalated in July,
according to the Freight Transport Association.
French and UK officials have installed sensors to detect elevated
carbon dioxide levels in the trailers to see if they are full of
people. To combat this, migrants are loaded into the lorries as late
as possible before the journey to the tunnel, and some groups have
started to place people in air-sealed aluminium foil sacks to limit
changes to the air, police say.
Some gangs even offer a “five-star” service, charging as much as
€20,000 for a passage that involves the provision of false documents.
One Sri Lankan network, for example, which was broken up in June, was
charging migrants €15,000 to €19,000 for a service that included a
fake British passport made in Thailand, say the police.
The next most expensive are the Albanian gangs, who will typically
charge about €6,000 to €8,000 for a single passage. They provide no
documents but a relatively “upmarket” service: for that price migrants
get a “guaranteed success” contract, meaning that as many attempts to
get into the UK will be made as are necessary, all for a fixed price.
As the client waits, they will also arrange a hotel room away from the
“jungle”.
Of the 19 networks dismantled this year, six have been Albanian. The
increased security is leading some of them to take Calais migrants
away from the city, focusing on routes through Belgium and the
Netherlands.
At the cheaper end of the spectrum, networks from the Horn of Africa
and the Middle East are typically less structured and more reliant on
luck to pass the security measures. The Eritrean and Sudanese gangs
charge about €500 to €700.
Ms May said last month that the migrants “profit from their fellow
humans’ misery” by “selling them false promises before loading them on
to dangerous vessels and sending them . . . to their deaths”.
But despite the inherent dangers, demand in the jungle to get across
to the UK by any means remains insatiable.
For Abraham, an 18-year-old Eritrean who has been at the camp for
three months trying get across with little to show for it except cuts
and bruises, the concern is not exploitation but getting to the UK. “I
wish I had the money to pay for passage . . . [but] I cannot even
afford a mobile phone,” he says.
“I really want to get to London now . . . London is good.”
Received on Thu Aug 20 2015 - 15:13:57 EDT