Crackdown on social media migrant adverts to begin, Home Office says
Social media users who tout illegal routes into the UK face up to five years in prison, starting on Monday.
The Home Office will activate part of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act, passed last year, as part of its crackdown on adverts telling migrants how they can circumvent immigration checks.
Border security minister Alex Norris told the Press Association his message to people smugglers is: “We are coming after you.”
The National Crime Agency (NCA) Online Communications Centre will trawl through thousands of social media accounts as part of the crackdown.
Immigration authorities already have the power to target social media users, but only if they can prove online content directly led to a migration offence.
The NCA’s work saw more than 10,000 social media accounts, pages and posts linked to people smuggling shut down last year, which was a record according to the UK Government.
But the new offence will target social media users posting adverts before migrants arrive on UK soil.
It is thought so-called “service agents”, middlemen who link migrants up with facilitators for small boats crossings and other routes, could be targeted with the new powers.
“Social media ads promoting the corrupt promise of a life and work in the UK are truly sickening,” Mr Norris told PA.
“To the people smugglers peddling this content, whether you are selling your vile trade online through ‘golden package deals’, supplying boat equipment or researching routes, we are coming after you.
“I will not stop until we’ve restored order and control to our borders.”
One Stories-style post thought to be in scope and seen by PA advertised “by truck – safe reach London UK” in two hours from France.
A TikTok post, written in Pashto, offered a one-hour “jet boat” from France to London at a cost of 4,000 dollars, according to a UK Government translation.
A third post, a Facebook comment also in Pashto, included a phone number, “if anyone wants to go to Turkey, Iran, Iraq, France, Germany, Italy, London, Austria, Switzerland”.
A total of 933 people have arrived in the UK by crossing the English Channel in small boats this year so far.
No one has made the dangerous journey since January 20.
The UK Government continues its effort to clamp down on people smuggling gangs and others helping migrants to make the journey.
Sir Keir Starmer announced during his trip to China that he had negotiated a deal with the Chinese authorities aimed at preventing boat motors made in the country from ending up in the hands of people smugglers.
Some 60% of the boats which crossed the Channel last year had motors made in China.
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If Nigel Farage hadn’t conned the easily suggestible into his brexit fraud, this wouldn’t have had to come about.
Ah, but oh how he wants it to continue because if anyone actually stops the boats, he’ll cr*p himself and have to campaign on something else like the ‘B.I.L.’, BRITAIN IS LAWLESS, his masked murdering killer squad to match I.C.E. U.S masquerading as Police but killing innocent legal citizens here. There are those thick enough to vote for it despite the fact that it could be them.
Crackdown on social media adverts, fair enough. How about a crackdown on social media LIES? You know, the ones that say migrants are being put up in 4 & 5 star hotels with the full conditions of those hotels maintained, staying in luxury with full privacy and full choice of menu all laid on by the taxpayer – yes, THAT LIE designed to whip up hatred, violence and form the basis of the Deform UK election manifesto?