Channel Crisis: Albanian Police to Be Stationed in Britain to Help Deport Illegal Boat Migrants

A group of people thought to be migrants are brought in to Dover, Kent, from a Border Forc
Gareth Fuller/PA Images via Getty Images
Peter Caddle

Police from corruption-riddled Albania are to be stationed in Britain to help deport illegal boat migrants from the Muslim-majority country.

Senior police officers from Albania are to be stationed in Britain with the aim of helping the British authorities deport boat migrants; part of a range of measures aimed at finally deterring would-be illegals from the Muslim-majority country.

The number of Albanians arriving in Britain by crossing the English Channel in small boats has spiked recently, with illegal migrants reportedly abusing laws surrounding modern-day slavery to avoid deportation.

According to a report by The Telegraph, Britain’s Home Office, responsible for border control and national security, is now looking to clamp down on Albanian migrants, with Home Secretary Priti Patel having reportedly agreed with Albania a new mechanism designed to quickly deport illegals back to the Balkan state.

To help expedite this process, foreign police officers from Albania will be stationed in Dover, and will be tasked with quickly identifying whether boat migrants are Albanian, what their background is, and whether they have links to crime.

Britain will also begin an advertising campaign in Albania informing would-be migrants that they face up to four years in jail should they be caught coming to the United Kingdom illegally — although police, prosecutors, and judges are in fact very weak on illegal immigration, and it is unlikely such people are unaware of this.

Having miserably failed to get a handle on the ongoing migrant crisis taking place on the English Channel so far, Patel appears rather keen to sell the new arrangement with Albanian authorities as a win, saying that the United Kingdom’s “excellent levels of co-operation with Albania” will, at long last, allow it to quickly deport migrants from Britain.

However, the stationing of foreign police officers from Albania may be cause for concern to some, in large part due to the country having a reputation for serious corruption at all levels of society.

According to an official report by United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, this corruption very much extends to the country’s police, with about 46 per cent of the total population viewing them as corrupt as of 2010.

Police corruption in the country has continued to be an issue in the 2020s, with Euronews reporting three senior Albanian police officers being arrested in 2021 under charges related to drug offences, corruption, abuse of post, and money laundering, along with other public officials in the country.

“The public officials, in some cases themselves the owners of the drugs, had guaranteed that the narcotics destined for the Italian region of Puglia would arrive there securely either by land or sea,” a statement from authorities at the time reportedly read.

With Albanian organised crime also being extremely prevalent in Britain — official statistics have Albanians making up the single-largest population of foreign criminals in British prisons now — it is unclear whether or not the Home Office or its elected head, Priti Patel, are concerned about police corruption creeping into operations in the Channel.

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