UK Working With European Partners to Tackle People Smuggling, Cooper Says

The government is “determined” to go after people smuggling gangs and is working with European partners to tackle the criminal enterprise, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has said.
“But there is work to do, and the Border Security Command will bring all the relevant bodies together to investigate, arrest and prosecute these networks, as well as deepen our ties with key international partners,” she said.
The home secretary made the comments ahead of chairing a summit on tackling organised illegal immigration crime, attended by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, ministers, and representatives from agencies including the National Crime Agency (NCA), Border Force, and the Crown Prosecution Service.
Cooper said in respect of the deaths, “Those gangs should not be able to get away with it, and that’s why we are determined to go after them.”
Two months after Labour came to power, the Border Security Command is still in the process of being established. But Friday’s meeting signals this multi-agency, intelligence-focused approach is already in operation.
According to a Home Office statement, the UK Intelligence Community (UKIC) has been deploying covert capability to support the NCA “to penetrate and dismantle the gangs at every level of operation—from facilitators to financiers.”
The NCA has closely co-operated with Bulgarian authorities and established an NCA presence in the eastern European nation—a critical transit country—which has led to more than 40 small boats and engines being intercepted in recent weeks, which the government said could have been used to help 2,400 people illegally get to Britain.
So far, there’s been a 50 percent increase in the number of NCA officers stationed in Europol, with there being a new post opened in Austria and officers are now permanently deployed to Romania.
The government is also working with partners father afield, including in Libya where British authorities are working with local police to target gangs moving people through the north African country from which illegal immigrants set off Europe.
Last week, the home secretary announced there are now an additional 100 specialist investigators globally.
Since Labour came to power, 8,754 asylum seekers have made the crossing.
Former immigration minister Robert Jenrick—the current frontrunner in the Conservative leadership contest—said that Labour had “surrendered to the smuggling gangs” when it scrapped the previous government’s plans to send illegal immigrants to Rwanda, which the Tories said would act as a deterrent.
Jenrick told Sky News: “Yvette Cooper will meet the National Crime Agency and police chiefs today, and they’ll tell her what they told me when I was the minister, which is that although it’s important that we do that work, it is not sufficient. You have to have a deterrent.”