Inspection report released by His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services
A comprehensive inspection report published last week by His Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) has identified significant shortcomings in the UK's approach to tackling organised immigration crime (OIC).
Image credit: WikipediaYou can download the 55-page report here or read it online here.
Commissioned by the Home Secretary in January 2024, the inspection evaluates the effectiveness of police forces and the National Crime Agency (NCA) in addressing OIC across England and Wales. HMICFRS's inspection took place before the Government's creation of the new Border Security Command.
It should be noted that the report refers to asylum seekers and refugees crossing the Channel by small boat as irregular migrants, and it considers their journeys to be illegal migration/immigration.
As HMICFRS explains, small boat crossings now make up the majority of detected 'illegal migration' to the UK: "In the year ending March 2024, official statistics show that 81 percent of all detected irregular migrants arriving in the UK had crossed the English Channel in small boats. But this figure should be treated with caution. People arriving by other methods are much harder to detect and nobody knows how many migrants enter undetected."
Overall, HMICFRS found that tackling organised immigration crime hasn't always been a priority for police forces in England and Wales, mainly because they saw it as the responsibility of Home Office Immigration Enforcement. While the police response has improved in recent years, HMICFRS says much more needs to be done.
On the positive side, HMICFRS was pleased to find that most frontline police personnel knew what to do when dealing with immigration crime incidents, and most were aware of Immigration Enforcement's National Command and Control Unit (NCCU) that police should contact when dealing with a suspected crime incident.
The report, however, identifies a number of shortcomings that hinder the effective identification of migrants and asylum seekers, leading to missed opportunities for intelligence gathering and the investigation of organised crime groups.
For example, at Manston in Kent where the Home Office processes people who arrive in the UK, HMICFRS noted: "We found that Border Force staff at Manston had no direct access to the Police National Database (PND) so couldn't use it during migrant arrival checks. This means that any migrants who had been arrested in the UK before, or whose facial imagery had been captured at a crime scene, wouldn't be identified at Manston."
HMICFRS also found that too few migrants and asylum seekers were being voluntarily debriefed for intelligence upon arrival in the UK in order to gather intelligence about the criminal groups responsible for OIC and for organising the small boat crossings. When debriefing was carried out, more co-ordination was needed between the authorities.
"It is important that law enforcement agencies carry out interviews with irregular migrants in a co-ordinated manner. Some people we spoke to told us that there was a risk of multiple agencies trying to speak to the same person or inexperienced personnel going to carry out the interviews," the report states.
HMICFRS further noted: "We were concerned to find that at the time of our inspection, there was no effective legal power to seize and examine mobile telephones or other electronic devices from migrants to search for intelligence."
His Majesty's Inspector of Constabulary, Lee Freeman, said many opportunities to address immigration crimes were being missed as a result.
Information sharing was also weak, with the report highlighting: "All the bodies concerned with tackling OIC have their own IT systems and they don't connect with each other. We often encounter these problems during our inspections. So, we weren't surprised to find examples where agencies had found it difficult to share information. […] In [one] unsatisfactory situation, the [Joint Fusion Cell] was copying intelligence relating to small boats onto a spreadsheet. Only one person at a time could access it. As a result, staff had to use several versions of the spreadsheet at the same time, which they then had to merge to create a complete version."
In addition, organised crime groups were not being prioritised by law enforcement agencies and were not being effectively investigated. HMICFRS stated: "We were surprised to find that most known organised crime groups (OCGs) believed to be involved in organised immigration crime (OIC) weren't being actively investigated. […] We were concerned to find very few examples of police forces or ROCUs proactively targeting OCGs involved in OIC."
HMICFRS suggests that a key reason for the low priority given to organised crime groups involved in organised immigration crime may be the lack of current or detailed intelligence about them. This creates a vicious circle: limited intelligence undermines prioritisation, resulting in fewer investigations, which in turn perpetuates the lack of intelligence.
Lee Freeman commented: "We have made ten recommendations that are intended to improve how organised crime groups are being identified and tackled. Their implementation is intended to strengthen the response to organised immigration crime and, ultimately, lead to fewer lives being lost."