2023-08-06 14:34:22
The UK government has announced a new partnership between law enforcement agencies and internet companies to curb illegal entry across the English Channel. “To stop the boats, we must fight the despicable human traffickers’ business model at the source,” Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said on Saturday. That means “toughening up on their attempts to lure people into these illegal crossings.”
The new partnership between the UK’s criminal investigation agency NCA and companies including Meta, Tiktok and Twitter, which has been renamed “X”, is targeting trafficking-related content on the online networks, according to Downing Street. These include offers for forged documents, group discounts, or false claims about a safe crossing.
Courts intervened
Sunak’s Tory government has promised an end to dangerous small-boat crossings of the English Channel from northern France, but has suffered some setbacks. The controversial plan to deport illegal immigrants to Rwanda was quashed by the courts. The planned accommodation of asylum seekers on a kind of huge houseboat in southern England to save on accommodation costs had to be postponed again and again.
Johannes Leithäuser, London Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 29 Published/Updated: Recommendations: 4 A comment by Dietrich Creutzburg, Berlin Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 4
Legal and illegal immigration has long been a major bone of contention in Britain and was a key issue in the 2016 Brexit referendum. More than 45,000 people arrived on the southern English coast in small boats in 2022 – a 60 per cent increase on the previous year.
Last month, Sunak’s government passed a controversial law, which has been criticized by the United Nations, that denies all illegal immigrants the right to seek asylum.
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