People smuggler convicted in France now seeking asylum in UK, BBC discovers
Jamal’s case is not isolated. Law enforcement officials in Europe have told us they know of 15 people smugglers who have received convictions from courts in France, Germany and Belgium, and who they believe are now living in the UK and seeking asylum under false names.
We heard about a man who was convicted in France, now lives in Manchester, sells used cars and is thought to be still involved in human trafficking.
Another man, also of French faith, lives in Blackpool. He sought asylum under a false name and boasted on social media that he had been granted permission to stay.
Since Brexit, the UK no longer has data-sharing agreements with many countries in the EU, making it difficult to check asylum seekers’ criminal and immigration records, according to Lucy Morton of the Immigration Services Association.
“If we could share databases even with our closest neighbours, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and France, then yes, we would know that they have been convicted of human trafficking,” he said.
Asylum seekers are fingerprinted when they arrive in the UK and checked against UK police databases; However, these do not necessarily mean that a conviction was made from another country.
The Home Office told us: “All people seeking asylum are subject to mandatory security checks to verify their identity for the purposes of immigration, security and crime checks.”
this point It was also done last November, external Border Security Minister Alex Norris added that details about the checks “are not made public” to protect the integrity of the control processes.
The Home Office said the UK had “a number of agreements with countries that allow the sharing of criminal record information” and that immigration enforcement was now at its highest level in history, with arrests for illegal work rising by 83%.
