In the early hours of Wednesday morning, Essex police found the bodies of 39 people in a refrigerated lorry container, which had reportedly been smuggled into the UK via the Belgian port of Zeebrugge before arriving in Purfleet. The people, initially thought to be Chinese nationals, are now thought to have come from Vietnam and may have travelled to Europe via China using false Chinese passports. It’s one of the worst human smuggling tragedies in the UK since 2000, when 58 Chinese migrants were found suffocated to death in a lorry in Dover.
The tragedy highlights the extent to which organised crime groups are evolving in order to circumvent border port security in both the UK and its European neighbours. As the technology aimed at preventing migrants from illegally entering the UK improves, the risks taken by criminal gangs – and the people who risk their lives to reach these shores – increase also. So what, if anything, can be done to ensure we don’t have another tragedy like this again?
Incidents of migrants being smuggled into the UK within refrigerated containers have been on the rise. So much so that in May the National Crime Agency (NCA) warned officials about the situation. The number of human trafficking and modern slavery incidents involving Chinese nationals also increased by 50 per cent from 2017 to 2018.
In 2017, 293 Chinese nationals smuggled into the UK were referred to the NCA for investigation. This figure rose to 451 in 2018 – 220 of these victims were smuggled into the UK for labour exploitation and a further 191 for sexual exploitation. But with border security now tighter than ever at major ports such as Calais, tragic cases involving shipping containers continue to rise as exploitative organised crime gangs try their luck elsewhere.
In its 2016 report, the NCA explained that criminal networks had begun targeting less busy ports such as Zeebrugge and Purfleet after Calais and Coquelles upped their use of carbon dioxide detectors, motion and heat sensors, plus detection dogs and physical, visual checks. Some UK border checks are done at juxtaposing borders in France and Belgium, with the Home Office saying that all freight vehicles are screened for hidden people before reaching the UK.
And the route taken was not the typical one that smugglers have used in the past. “We can call it a secondary route. The thing is, the main route from Calais to Dover is now patrolled, and there is technology there,” says Paolo Campana, lecturer of criminology at the University of Cambridge, who researches the issue of human smuggling into Europe. “There’s been a huge investment in infrastructure to detect people. In a sense this is a displacement for migrants trying to use other ports or secondary routes because the surveillance and patrolling at those ports is definitely lower than at Calais.”
Back in 2015, the British and French governments installed heat sensors along the Channel Tunnel and placed a further 22,990 miles of security fencing along the border crossing. A year later, Eurotunnel, the operator of the Channel Tunnel, began deploying drones with heat sensors to further enable them to monitor the Tunnel for people. Eurotunnel found that migrants were no longer trying to cross the border from the Channel Tunnel, with increasing numbers of people detected trying to get to the UK from other ports along the French coast.
“I don’t think there is much that border forces can do in the UK to stop these types of events from happening,” says Campana. “More can probably be done in Belgium, as has been done in Calais, maybe with more investment in technology.”
A report published by Europol’s European Migrant Smuggling Centre earlier this year found that hiding in cars, vans or lorries remained the most common method of trying to avoid detection by border security, adding that people were often transported in “high-risk circumstances”. Almost 80 per cent were concealed in vehicles using airtight containers, or in vehicle engine compartments – in the space between the engine and the bonnet. Research from the Centre for European Policy Studies, a leading think tank on EU affairs, published in April, also found that smugglers were more frequently hiding migrants in small car boots due to more police checks and the use of heat-detection cameras on trucks.
The increased use of technology at seaport borders has potentially forced people smugglers to seek comparatively less-reinforced ports such as Zeebrugge, leading to smugglers using more dangerous routes across the English Channel.
On Thursday, Joachim Coens, chief executive of the port of Zeebrugge told Belgian media that a refrigerated trailer wouldn’t have been interfered with before it arrived in the port as it would have been sealed shut, suggesting the people were in the container before it arrived at the port. He added that the seal was examined, as well as the license plate, with only the driver being scanned by security cameras. According to The Telegraph, Zeebrugge has heat and carbon dioxide scanners, but only visual inspections took place, and only one in 400 ship containers have their papers checked.
“In the case of Calais, they’re rigging the port, and it’s influenced the migrant smugglers’ modus operandi,” explains Lina Vosyliute, a co-author on the Centre for European Policy Studies research. “They are using increasingly more dangerous concealment methods including refrigerated containers where the heat of humans could be more difficult to detect.”
In the NCA’s 2016 threat report, the organisation identified Zeebrugge as a key embarkation point, adding that organised crime groups were switching to ports away from migrant camps that were perceived as having less security. According to Campana, the level of technology at Zeebrugge and Purfleet is likely some way behind what would be found at Calais and Coquelles. In effect this creates a weak point of entry that criminal gangs can exploit.
Last year, it was revealed that the UK Border Force was seeking suppliers who could provide fast-screening technology for freight vehicles which can scan 200 to 250 vehicles an hour. It was also revealed that the Border Force had deployed five passive millimetre wave infrared systems, which can penetrate through walls to detect people concealed in lorries – two systems at Calais, two at Coquelles and one at Zeebrugge.
And because organised crime gangs are having to take more risks to get past the technology, it’s having a knock-on effect on the lives of the people being smuggled. “Facilitators in the human smuggling chain often don't have an incentive to prioritise wellbeing,” says Alex Chung, research fellow in University College London's department of science, technology, engineering and public policy, who has researched Asian drug trafficking groups in Western countries and the involvement of organised crime in Asian human smuggling.
“People are put into containers that can be freezing cold and which have poor ventilation or no ventilation at all. And there is rarely operational oversight as many facilitators are only in charge of their segment of the chain.”
As events this week have shown, while technology such as heat sensors and passive millimetre wave systems make borders more secure, such progress also has a very real, human cost. “On the one hand, you can agree with the law enforcement authorities that it makes it easier for them to detect smugglers, and they may be more equipped to deal with migrant smugglers and criminals,” Vosyliute says. “On the other hand, it hasn’t been thought through clearly what impact it has on the migrants themselves.”
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
