On 4 February, a lorry stopped in Dover was found to be concealing 33 people from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. But the migrants were not being clandestinely moved into the UK – they were being smuggled out of the country.
The National Crime Agency (NCA) said the lorry was about to board a ferry to France, in one of a series of recent cases of outbound people smuggling detected in Britain.
There has been a “spike in arrests” for lorry drivers taking large payments to move migrants to the European mainland on ferries and through the Channel Tunnel, officials say, but the true scale of the activity is unknown.
Who is behind outbound smuggling?
The crossings are being facilitated by people smugglers who are advertising the illicit journeys on social media, increasingly using snappy videos on TikTok to reach potential customers.
