People smugglers

Two Italian police officers in Naples are among several alleged members of a criminal gang helping to smuggle illegal migrants into Italy, discovered by wiretaps.

MILAN (AP) — France’s interior minister says some aid groups operating in the Mediterranean Sea sometimes act like accomplices to human traffickers.

The Italian secret service has warned that people-smugglers in the Mediterranean may seek to engineer a mass drowning in order to garner Western sympathy and resume the flow of migration.

Criminal people-traffickers are telling would-be illegal migrants they are almost guaranteed residency in Britain because the authorities “never send people back”, an investigation has revealed.

Britain’s former director-general of Immigration Enforcement has warned illegal migrants are using Border Force and lifeboat volunteers as a “taxi service”.

Austria has announced plans to automatically block asylum for migrants who arrive with the help of smugglers, with Chancellor Sebastian Kurz stressing the importance of “smashing the business model of human traffickers”.

THESSALONIKI, Greece (AP) – Greek police say they have arrested two Pakistani migrant traffickers operating from Turkey.

Reporting that Morocco has replaced Libya as the primary migration transit point to Europe, internal German intelligence documents have revealed African migrants can secure ‘guaranteed’ passage to Europe for just 2,000 euros.

People-smugglers are transporting “desperate” illegal migrants to the European Union via Turkey in limousines and luxury cars for up to 3,000 euros a pop.

(AFP) — Four people were arrested in the Spanish overseas territory of Ceuta for charging migrants up to 2,000 euros to take them to the mainland in speedboats normally used for drug trafficking, police said Saturday.

A people-smuggling kingpin responsible for bringing hundreds of illegal migrants into Britain had been imprisoned in France following a cross-border criminal investigation.

Theresa May has said Facebook is “allowing people-smuggling adverts”, revealing the UK government is aware of more than 500 pages and posts allegedly advertising and facilitating illegal crossing.

Six men have been found guilty of trying to illegally smuggle Albanian migrants across the English Channel in speedboats.

Police have busted an alleged people-smuggling gang after intercepting a speedboat full of illegal migrants in the dead of night on the Dover coast on Friday.

The National Crime Agency (NCA) has warned that the United Kingdom’s soft border with the Irish Republic is being exploited by people smugglers, as Prime Minister Theresa May “sells out” Brexit in order to keep it as open as possible.

(AP) — Spain’s maritime rescue service says it has rescued 366 migrants attempting the dangerous crossing of the Mediterranean Sea this weekend.

A two-year-old girl has died in Belgium from a gunshot wound to the head after reportedly being held out of the window of a van full of migrants to keep pursuing police at a distance.

(THE TIMES) — A gang who used jet skis to smuggle migrants across the Strait of Gibraltar in trips that took half an hour and cost £3,500 has been broken up by Spanish police.

Police in Montpellier has taken down a network of migrants from the Ivory Coast who used forged documents to claim that they were underage when they were actually adults.

Turkey has been accused of allowing migrants to “surge” into Greece amid a dispute over EU funding, as Europol reveals they are tracking some 65,000 people-smugglers.

Since last summer the number of migrants crossing from Libya has greatly declined, but new figures show that the number is rising once again as Libya becomes increasingly unstable.

Cyprus police say a 36-year-old man has been arrested for allegedly driving one of a pair of boats that brought 305 Syrian refugees to the island’s northwestern coast.

Several media sources have claimed that the reduction in migrant numbers into Italy has come about because of a secret agreement between the Italians and people traffickers – allegations the government denies.

Facebook is hosting people smuggling advertisements, with gangs offering to take migrants to Europe and America, make them fake passports, and traffic them across the European Union (EU).

ROME (AP) — Greek authorities say they have arrested three men on suspicion of ferrying 69 refugees or migrants on a yacht to the island of Zakynthos off the western coast of Greece’s mainland.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has suspended its so-called “rescue” missions ferrying migrants across the Mediterranean to Europe.

Officials have warned of a new ‘back door’ illegal migration route opening and a wave of asylum seekers boating to the UK after a group of Iranian migrants arrived on British shores in a rubber dinghy.

At least 56 people have drowned over the past 24 hours, and dozens remain missing, after human traffickers forced 300 African migrants off two Yemen-bound boats and into the sea.

The ringleader of people smuggling ring who illegally brought thousands of mostly-Iranian nationals into the UK has been apprehended at Heathrow airport.

ROME (AP) — Italian authorities ordered a German group’s migrant rescue vessel seized Wednesday, alleging that its crew took on migrants directly from smugglers’ boats near Libya’s coast.