People smugglers jailed after cramming migrants under campervan bed, on same day as foreign criminals deported
25 July 2024, 12:48
People smugglers have been jailed after cramming migrants into a camper van to sneak them into the UK.
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Brother and sister Natalie Sirrell and Alan Sirrell, Casey Dennis Loughnane, Charlotte Smyth and Benjamin Tokeley ran the smuggling operation.
The plot - to sneak two Vietnamese people into the UK via France in a hidden compartment underneath the bed of a campervan - was foiled by Border Force officers in France on July 19, 2020.
The space that the two people were crammed into was less than one foot high.
Loughnane and Alan Sirrell - neither of whom was in the van at the time the plot was uncovered - were both found guilty at trial of conspiring to facilitate the commission of a breach of UK immigration law.
Loughnane was sentenced to four and a half years in prison and Sirrell was given three and a half years.
Natalie Sirrell, who was driving the van, was given a two-year suspended sentence, electronic monitoring and a £500 fine.
Smyth, who was in the passenger seat, was also given two years suspended. Both had pleaded guilty.
Tokeley pleaded guilty at a separate hearing. He will be sentenced later.
On the same day, the government returned 46 criminals and illegal migrants to Vietnam and Timor-Leste, a south-east Asian island nation.
Labour have come under fire from the Conservatives for scrapping the Rwanda plan, with concerns that axing it could serve to remove a deterrent for migrants planning to cross the English Channel.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said earlier this week that the government was replacing flight planning for Rwanda with flights to return foreign criminals and immigration offenders to their home country.
The government said they were planning to tackle illegal immigration in the first instance by targeting car washes and the beauty sector.
Border security is a key priority for Labour, with the government already starting to lay the foundations for the Border Security Command.
The migration crisis was also a key topic for the Prime Minister in the European Political Community summit, which took place on 18 July.
The PM said that he would consider offshore processing arrangements.He also cited strategies such as increasing the UK’s presence at Europol, cementing new cooperation agreements with Slovenia and Slovakia to crack down on organised crime, and a pledge to share more intelligence “to put the gangs out of business.”
Over 15,000 people have crossed the Channel in small boats this year. “We cannot pretend everything is OK," Ms Cooper said on Sunday.
Ms Cooper said on Thursday: "Today’s flight shows the government is taking quick and decisive action to secure our borders and return those with no right to be here.
"We thank the Governments of Vietnam and Timor-Leste for their co-operation, without which this could never have happened.
"Our strong diplomatic bonds with other countries have never been more crucial to our mission to bring order back into the asylum and immigration system, tackling irregular migration, and making sure the rules are properly respected and enforced."
