Earlier this week, the French authorities announced that they had identified 26 of the 27 bodies found in the Channel close to the French port of Calais after the sinking on November 24th of an inflatable dinghy carrying migrants attempting a clandestine crossing to Britain.
Among the dead were two minors, one aged seven, the other 16. The majority of the victims of what was the deadliest accident on record involving migrants crossing the Channel were Kurdish people from Iraq.
This year has seen record numbers of migrants attempting to cross the dangerous stretch of the Channel from north-east France to England, where by last month more than 25,000 people, according to official UK figures, had landed since January 1st. That was more than three times the numbers for the whole of 2020.
The crossings by dinghy have steadily increased following the progressive security clampdown over recent years in the port of Calais and the nearby Channel Tunnel rail terminal, which in the past were the principal sites from where many migrants attempted to reach the UK by stowing away on trucks or trains.
The emerging details of those who died in the Channel last month paint a sad and moving reminder of the desperation of those who brave the treacherous seas for a hoped-for better life, thousands of kilometres from their homelands, and how they fall prey to organised criminal gangs who make vast sums from migrant trafficking between France and Britain. They supply the inflatable dinghies, even importing container loads of small boats from China, and the organisation for the crossings. The larger the boats – many of which were described by the British National Crime Agency this week as “death traps” – the more profit is made.
The gangs are the target of a French police agency called the OCRIEST – the Office central pour la répression de l’immigration irrégulière et de l’emploi d’étrangers sans titre – which is dedicated to combatting illegal immigration networks (and, in parallel, the employment of immigrants without valid working permits). As such, the OCRIEST is on the frontline of the judicial investigation launched into last month’s tragedy in the Channel. But many of the investigations by its team of 123 officers, which can involve cooperation with colleagues in neighbouring countries where the gangs are often spread, are launched on its own initiative before eventually being placed under the authority of an examining magistrate.
In the interview below with Mediapart’s Nejma Brahim and Camille Polloni, OCRIEST head Xavier Delrieu, 56, details how the agency tracks down the gangs and how the latter operate. But he readily admits it is impossible to “completely” eradicate them.
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Mediapart: Do you have a recent example of the dismantling of a migrant-smuggling gang?
Xavier Delrieu: We dismantled an important ‘small boats’ ring three weeks ago, with 16 arrests and 13 people placed in detention. It organised the whole of the network and all the logistics – the transport of boats, their delivery on the coast, the recruitment of [passenger] migrants, payment of the smugglers and the lookouts.
Mediapart: What is the profile of those who run the smuggling networks?
X.D.: Iraqi Kurds known to our services, well implanted in the Nord [département, similar to a county, in north-east France], with a supply network abroad. They have been in France for some while, sometimes living in clandestine conditions, [but also] sometimes with residence permits. Others live in Germany. They communicate through encrypted messages, using WhatsApp.
Mediapart: How long had you been working on that case?
X.D.: For about one year. Ninety percent of our work is carried out on [our own] initiative, we receive very few direct instructions from magistrates, except in a case like that of the 27 people who drowned. We work principally through intelligence, in order to see if there is a case to open a judicial probe. We can use phone taps, informers, intelligence that comes from liaison officers and other foreign partners. If a French national is arrested in the Balkans in a van with migrants inside, we’ll be informed and we’ll check if that person or their vehicle is registered in our files.
Mediapart: How does the OCRIEST operate?
X.D.: The OCRIEST carries out investigations to dismantle migrant-smuggling networks, in the Calais region but also at the Italian and Spanish borders [with France]. We coordinate all of the judicial cases launched by the 45 mobile investigation brigades [BMRs] across the country, and we compile the national statistical results. We can work with the National jurisdiction for the fight against organised crime [JUNALCO], the specialised inter-regional jurisdictions [JIRs] and the judicial courts in Calais and Dunkirk, as well as [those close to Paris] in Évry, Melun, Bobigny, Créteil, and so on. Sometimes we are appointed [by a magistrate] to work in conjunction with local BRMs, which are well placed to identify [trafficking] networks, or we launch investigations based on our own intelligence.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
Mediapart: Where do you draw the line between petty delinquency and organised crime? Some individual people smugglers might themselves be in difficult situations and exploited by others.
X.D.: The [individual] smugglers aren’t major criminals, even if they do commit offences which must be punished. They are sometimes under the thumb and in the grip of networks and work to pay for their own [clandestine] journey. They’re therefore at the limit of being both a perpetrator and a victim.
The OCRIEST doesn’t work on the [individual] smugglers, but rather the traffickers. Organised crime implies that there is a structure, a recurrency of events, remuneration. A smuggler might interest us for intelligence purposes, to see if there is enough matter to launch an investigation into a structured network, if they are known in our data base, if they talk, if their phone contains Iraqi, English, German numbers that allow us to find a network.
Mediapart: Is it not easier to get hold of the smugglers than the bosses of these networks, who are often in the shadows?
X.D.: Our work, which is longer, precisely consists of catching them [the bosses]. An investigation into a ‘small boats’ people-trafficking network can take between three months and a year, even a year and a half. I often make the comparison with drugs trafficking, even though these are two hermetic criminal networks which do not overlap.
Mediapart: How are those boats used for the crossings supplied?
X.D.: Iraqi Kurd networks have put in place a system for importing boats which come from China, via Turkey, which are taken by road to Germany or the Netherlands and stored there, like drugs, in secret warehouses. One or two days before the crossing to Britain, the boats are despatched, according to requirements, to France, sometimes via Belgium. They keep the Zodiacs [inflatable dinghies] deflated, with the motor and the life jackets in the boots of cars or in vans, while awaiting the moment to put to sea, or they bury them on the beaches. When the weather conditions are favourable, they have only to bring along the migrants, which lowers the risk of being stopped and arrested.
Mediapart: Why is it apparently so difficult to prevent the transport of this equipment when the route it takes is known?
X.D.: Firstly, there is no cooperation with China and Turkey. The major challenge for us is to include Germany in the [operational] loop. Until now, Germany considers that the supply of boats to migrant traffickers organising crossings from France is not an offence – it’s true that to sell a boat is, ultimately, not illegal. They are reticent to open investigations, but I think that will evolve.
In eighty percent of our cases, there are connections with Germany. Either the migrants or the boats come from Germany, or the trafficking bosses are based there. We will not be able to resolve this phenomenon without a frank and total cooperation with all these countries.
Mediapart: Do the events like the November 24th tragedy in the Channel, or that in 2019 when 39 Vietnamese nationals were found dead in a refrigerated truck trailer in Essex, near London, notably affect your work?
X.D.: Regarding those two examples, OCRIEST put two groups of investigators, totalling around 20 people, on the cases. These are priority cases. We put in every means possible because there are deaths, there is the aspect of media coverage, and these are cases that don’t leave us insensitive. We are determined to identify the traffickers and to put them behind bars. In cases like those, the migrants are victims above all.
In the case of the 39 Vietnamese found in the refrigerated truck, it was us who investigated it, with the JUNALCO. All the loadings took place in France, and we had already been working on the Vietnamese [migrant trafficking] since several years. We were able to open a file and to identify the network and dismantle it. The first arrests happened ten months later, thanks to a joint investigating team set up with Belgium, Britain and the Netherlands.
Mediapart: Do such events lead to a reorganisation of the trafficking networks? What is the situation with the attempted crossings from France to Britain since the November 24th sinking?
X.D.: We try to anticipate things. Currently, there are fewer crossings for several reasons: there is the sinking, the major attention it drew and the weather conditions. It’s a whole set of things. But that doesn’t mean that it won’t pick up again tomorrow, once the emotion has died down and favourable weather conditions return.
One can see the change in a network’s operational methods during the length of an investigation. Previously, the networks went about, above all, loading trucks at night, on motorway vehicle parks. While the driver would be sleeping, the traffickers loaded the migrants. Since 2019, they have turned to small boats.
Mediapart: Because of the strengthening of checks?
X.D.: Yes, but it really began to multiply during the lockdown. The crossings by plane, truck or car became complicated. Virtually the only means by which to head for Britain is by boat. The traffickers realised that it was very profitable. The average cost of a place on a boat is between 2,000 euros and 3,000 euros. The networks for supplying boats were put in place, with these large Zodiacs on which you can have 30 or 40 migrants on average, occasionally 50 or 60, whereas before it was more like ten or 12 people per boat.
Mediapart: Has the use of trucks completely stopped?
No, it still exists but since 2019 the proportion has been inversed. About twenty percent of crossings are by truck, eighty percent by boat.
Mediapart: The number of Channel crossings has risen dramatically this year. What is the explanation for this?
X.D.: The traffickers have ‘industrialised’ their criminal activity. They began by buying boats in shops in the Nord. But that became known. They then turned to using small ads, like [small ads website] Leboncoin. After that they put in place a supply chain using shipping containers, when 80 or 100 boats arrive in one go in Germany. With that operational mode it remains profitable, even if one boat out of two is intercepted, or even two out of three.
The network we recently dismantled said it made a net profit of 74,000 euros per boat, at a rate of four boats per month, which means a profit of between 280,000 euros to 300,000 euros. Over the course of a year, that represents more than 3 million euros in profit after deduction of costs.
An enormous interior security force is deployed every night, with around 30 investigations ongoing. Despite everything, forty percent of the boats manage to make the crossing. We can’t intercept all of them. Our strategy is to create insecurity for the traffickers, up until the day when they’ll tell themselves that it costs too much.
Mediapart: Some among associations involved with migrants’ welfare and researchers studying migrant issues have argued that the reinforcing of controls and the militarisation of border security have simply encouraged people smugglers to find inventive solutions.
X.D.: The networks have a very great adaptability and are inventive. If they see that an operational method no longer works, they find another. As soon as there are weaknesses somewhere, they exploit them, like in Belarus and Poland. It’s a little like a stream that overflows, where the water will manage to flow along even if there’s a rock – short of building a complete dam.
Mediapart: You make a comparison with drug trafficking, where the arrests of bosses of such networks fail to stop the sale and use of drugs. What is your professional driving force, given that you can’t overcome the trafficking of migrants?
X.D.: Our objective is to dismantle the networks of organised crime, while working towards there being fewer numbers of migrants who risk their lives in crossing towards Britain. We know that we won’t completely halt the phenomenon, one must be realistic. The aim is to slow them [the traffickers] down, to frustrate them, to put the thugs in prison, to stop them from being confident in their trafficking, and the feeling of total impunity.
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- The orginal French version of this interview can be found here.
English version, with some added reporting, by Graham Tearse