Monday, September 30, 2019

smuggling people, overview

  An undercover team infiltrated a criminal gang operating out of Dunkirk in the north of France, who charge £7,000 for a spot on a boat crossing the channel.  The LBC team posed as an Indian family pretending to attempt to bring a young family member over to the UK….They met people smuggler Farooq in his camp in the woodlands outside Dunkirk.  Farooq, caught by the undercover reporter with a hidden camera, claimed that French Police officers at the border advise smugglers on when is the best time to attempt the journey through the channel.  As the LBC reporter asked whether there are ever any problems with the French Police,  Farooq replied: “French police is no problem.  Police in France just gives you the way.” He added:  “Because police want you to get out France, yes?  They want you to go.  They help.  This is business to France.”…
   French Police in Dunkirk denied the allegations.  Speaking to Express.co.uk a spokesman said:  “The information is false.  We don’t help illegal immigrants to get to the UK." https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1184429/eu-migrant-crisis-french-police-calais-dunkirk-emmanuel-macron-english-channel-lbc
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8-31-19  At least 54 migrants were taken by officers for questioning at Dover this morning following an attempt to flock to the UK from the Channel on several small boats.  https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1184429/eu-migrant-crisis-french-police-calais-dunkirk-emmanuel-macron-english-channel-lbc
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8-23-19      

-smuggler boat, at Dover.  “We had an event around 2.30 am this morning, and at 5 am, then at 7 am and then again at 11.30 am.”

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1169292/English-channel-Migrant-border-force-Dover-Calais-UK-immigration-latest-news-Priti-Patel
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Athens, Greece — Human smuggling is a big business in Athens and CBS News has found evidence that ISIS members are being moved through Greece to the rest of Europe.
In central Athens, an area around Omonia Square is notorious as a center of criminal activity where human smuggling gangs operate.  Filming with a hidden camera, CBS News set up a meeting with Alrayes.  He comes from North Africa and runs a smuggling syndicate, moving people from Athens to western Europe for around $8,000 each.
"'From Athens you go [to] Italy, you arrive there in Italy. I have people will help you with everything.  It's very easy," he said.
His usual customers are migrants and refugees. Hundreds of thousands have come to Greece from the Middle East, many making the dangerous crossing by boat. They're dreaming of a better life in western Europe, and Alrayes and other smugglers can get them there.

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Filming with a hidden camera, CBS News set up a meeting with a man who runs a smuggling syndicate.  CBS NEWS

I posed not as a refugee, but as an ISIS wife, who wanted safe passage to Germany.  "No problem," Alrayes said.  In fact, he said, he's moved other ISIS members before.

He even bragged that he'd smuggled three brothers of notorious al Qaeda terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a claim CBS News cannot confirm.
The smugglers use stolen identity documents.  CBS News went undercover again, this time posing as smugglers, and found criminals with hundreds of them for sale in Athens, including U.S. passports. They try to match their customers with an ID photo they resemble.
Then the smugglers use the stolen documents to fly people from Athens to Spain or Italy, where they claim security is lax.  From there they can travel anywhere in western Europe with no border checks.
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 more than 36,000 migrants entered Spain this year seeking a better life in Europe.  Almost all of them relied on smugglers to make the crossing....
Ousman Umar who made a five-year journey from Ghana to Spain said it was "impossible" to travel thousands of kilometres (miles) from sub-Saharan Africa through deserts and other inhospitable areas without the aid of gangs.  "There is almost no chance of reaching Europe illegally" without paying traffickers, Robert Crepinko, the head of the human smuggling unit at Europol, the European Union's policing arm, told AFP.  90% of migrants who enter Europe are helped by human traffickers, he added, citing a 2015 study.
Spain has become the main entry point for migrants arriving this year, after Italy and Greece.  "The journey can last one year, two years, depending on the ring and the funds you have, because the trafficking networks will take you as far as you can pay," Jose Nieto Barroso of the national police's human smuggling unit UCRIF told AFP.  Migrants gather in Morocco because "it's the best place to wait for the right moment to cross" over to Spain, said Nieto Barroso.
The vast majority pay for a spot on an inflatable dinghy or to take part in a mass run on the heavily fortified border fences that surround Ceuta and Melilla, two tiny Spanish territories in North Africa that share the EU's only land borders with Africa.
Human traffickers charge 18 euros ($21) to try to scale the border fences, 200-700 euros to join a packed boat to cross the narrow Strait of Gibraltar separating Spain from Morocco by just 15 kilometres (nine miles) at its narrowest point, or up to 5,000 euros to make the trip by jet ski, according to Spanish police.  Europol estimates migrants pay on average 3,000-5,000 euros for a complete trip to Europe.
Once in Spain many want to move on to wealthier northern European countries like Britain, France and Germany where they believe they will have better opportunities or because they already have family there.  Once again human traffickers play a role in getting them there.  The smugglers promise migrants they will be rescued at sea by the Spanish coast guard and then taken to migrant reception centres where "in three or four days members of the network will be in the area and get you out," Nieto Barroso said.
The gang will then take the migrants to another country or, in worst-case scenarios, pass them on to other gangs that exploit them.  Women are sometimes forced into prostitution while men are used as slave labour in agriculture or made to beg in the streets.
With migrant arrivals to Spain's southern shores on the rise, more of them are heading north to the border town of Irun, some sleeping rough as they wait to cross into neighbouring France, or to Santander, where police in August arrested two people for hiding migrants in their vehicle which was going to board a ferry bound for Britain.  Police smashed 25 human trafficking rings in Spain last year but many more remain active in Africa, recruiting more migrants.  https://www.france24.com/en/20180918-smugglers-pave-path-migrants-africa-europe
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  Philippines is a source country and transit country when it comes to forced labor and sexual exploitation. Thailand is one of the biggest suppliers of forced labor in the Southeast Asia region and around the globe. Most of the forced laborers are brought in from nearby Southeast Asian countries like MyanmarMalaysiaLaosVietnam and Cambodia.  Migrants voluntarily migrate into Thailand where they can end up in forced labor or sold into its own sex industry.[9]
Laos is labeled as a source country of men, women, and children for the sex slave industry and the forced labor industry.  Many of the Lao migrants move to countries like Thailand or are sent to China from a transit country.[10]   Lao migrants are mainly flowed into sectors of intensive labor with little pay. 70 percent of migrants from Laos are female and many of them are sought for the use of domestic labor. In Thailand there are no labor protection for domestic workers, which can lead to risks for the migrant Lao females.[11]
Cambodia is a source country for migrants due to high levels of unemployment and poverty. This leaves natives with little opportunity and high levels of risk for human trafficking.  Many Cambodian women are trafficked into sexual or labor industries, while men are trafficked into the fishing, agricultural and construction sectors in many countries within the Southeast Asian region.[11]
Myanmar's history of rule under a military regime is one of the reasons the country is considered a source country.  The regime's poor management of the economy and human rights abuse put the countries citizens at risk for human trafficking. Men, women and children are subject to labor exploitation in ThailandChinaPakistanSouth Korea and  Macau.[10]  Children are trafficked in Thailand to be forced into begging, while young girls are trafficked into China to work in the sex slave industry.[12]  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_trafficking_in_Southeast_Asia
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