Nearly 50 arrests in people smuggling crackdown at Irish border
Week of action targets criminal gangs who illegally try to enter the UK from Ireland, comes alongside a wider 74% surge in organised immigration crime arrests.
Immigration Enforcement has handed a blow to organised criminal gangs illegally smuggling people from Ireland to the UK, with 49 arrests across 3 days of targeted action at UK ports.
Between Tuesday 22 September and Thursday 24 September, law enforcement agencies patrolled a number of seaports, airports, roads and rail networks across Northern Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales in a bid to catch those circumventing UK immigration laws.
Operation Comby, a multi-agency crackdown targeting individuals who have illegally passed from Ireland to the UK has led to the arrest of over 250 organised criminals and immigration offenders since the election – of which 113 have been removed. The operation has also seen the seizure of almost half a million pounds in cash.
It aims to stamp out abuse of the Common Travel Area (CTA) between the United Kingdom and Ireland. The CTA is a long-standing arrangement between the United Kingdom and Ireland which allows British and Irish citizens to move freely between each country.
This activity works alongside Immigration Enforcement’s Operation Gull which provides routine deployments across Northern Irish ports and airports, tackling everyday abuse of the CTA which has led to almost 1,000 arrests in the last year.
Minister for Border Security and Asylum, Anna Turley said:
We are bearing down on these organised criminal gangs who operate on wicked lies and deception.
Individuals who think they can get round our laws will quickly find out that they will not be successful.
This operation is a very clear example of Immigration Enforcement’s round the clock work disrupt these criminal gangs and remove those with no right to be in the UK.
At Belfast International Airport, 2 Romanian women were arrested as illegal entrants to the UK, having travelled from Ireland to Northern Ireland without required permissions. Further checks identified them as possible victims of people trafficking. Intelligence was gained on the criminals who pushed them into the journey. One was detained for removal back to Romania and the other voluntarily returned back to Ireland.
Following intelligence sharing, Belfast Harbour Police stopped a vehicle at Belfast Port carrying 4 Romanian nationals. Searches of the vehicle found £130,000 worth of counterfeit Apple products. All 4 individuals were arrested and now face removal from the UK.
Director of Enforcement, Compliance and Crime, Eddy Montgomery, said:
As part of our wider crackdown on abuse of the Common Travel Area, Operation Comby is delivering an intelligence-led approach to disrupting Organised Immigration Crime, targeting criminal networks that exploit these routes.
Immigration crime can take many forms, but at the heart of what we do is protecting vulnerable people and ensuring the criminal gangs who exploit them are brought down.
Between July 2024 and June 2026, Immigration Enforcement conducted almost 3,000 enforcement visits in Northern Ireland resulting in over 2,400 arrests.
Nearly 1,000 people have been subsequently returned, with almost 500 of these being to Ireland.
On top of this, the Home Secretary announced that she will double the Immigration Enforcement budget by 2028/29 and boost workforce numbers by 60%. This will see tens of thousands more raids, arrests, and removal of those with no right to be in the UK.
The government has already begun the work of restoring control and order to our borders. Since the election, over 80,000 immigration offenders and foreign criminals have been removed from the UK.