Copyright bbc
The UK government has drafted new legal powers aimed at improving border security and the asylum and immigration system. It has been under intense pressure over illegal migration, with 36,000 people having crossed the English Channel in small boats since the start of 2025. Irregular arrivals into the UK are up 27% on the previous year, and the vast majority of these are via small boat. However this is just a small percentage of the UK's overall immigration figure. Paul Harvey, a chief immigration officer, said combined operations involving police, Border Force officials and immigration officers, were having an effect on organised immigration crime "seeking to exploit" the CTA between England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. He said as well as "business as usual activities" where officers checked vehicles and people entering the port at Holyhead, they were also involved in intelligence-led operations with counterparts elsewhere, including Ireland and Albania, targeting people smugglers. "We've got an intelligence cell in Belfast, and they'll look at things like shipping manifests, and they'll look at routes of vehicles and what might be suspicious, and they'll tell us that, and we'll look at those vehicles," he said. "There's absolutely an organised crime element that seeks to exploit the common travel areas that use Holyhead. We know that. "But there are also individual people who seek to exploit that. "And there's also other cases, so people who seek to use this as a route to bring people in, and commodities, like drugs, alcohol, tobacco. Unfortunately, people are also commodities."
