UK-bound migrant reveals his past in exclusive Express investigation (Image: Courtesy of Harper’s Bazaar UK / Agata Pospieszynska)
Criminal migrants expelled from EU countries are travelling by small boat to England because they believe they will be granted asylum and “won’t be sent back”, an Express investigation has revealed. In a migrant camp on the outskirts of Dunkirk, an Iranian man told our undercover reporter he was coming to commit violent crimes in Britain.
The self-confessed criminal explained that he was heading to the UK because the Dublin regulation, which allows migrants to be returned to the first country they arrive in, no longer applies.
“[I’m coming to the UK to be in a] gang to sell drugs, fight, you know, stab [and] shoot,” he said. “I was 29 years in Denmark and have a criminal record, but England can’t see that. Europe [the] Schengen [free travel zone and] Dublin. So they cannot send me back to Denmark. If I want asylum in Switzerland [near my] family [there], the Swiss send me back to Denmark.”
EXCLUSIVE: UK-bound migrant reveals dark criminal past
The migrant added that a deal to arrange his travel to Britain had already been struck by an uncle who lived in London and a trafficker he called Samad.
During a visit to the camp, the Express team encountered another migrant with a scar down the front of his face, called Abram, also from Iran. He told us openly that he’d been living as an illegal migrant for 16 years in the Netherlands. But, after being kicked out, he’d decided to take a small boat to England because he believed he’d be able to claim asylum in Britain.
“I was [living in the Netherlands for] 16 and a half years illegally,” he told the Express “after they [kicked] me out I came here. I can’t go back to Iran because I’m atheist, and I was fighting for freedom. In Netherlands they don’t give you anything just [put] you in the street. I hope I can come to England.”
He added that he was one of many illegal migrants kicked out of other EU nations who were travelling to the UK by small boat.
These stunning revelations were captured as part of an Express investigation into the migrant camps, which revealed traffickers brazenly operating under the noses of French authorities.
Just 20 metres from a French police van, a man—acting as a fixer for the traffickers—who claimed to be getting a free trip to Britain in exchange for piloting a dinghy, cut a £1,500 deal with our undercover reporter.
“You can come with me to the beach,” he told our reporter. “We go together and pump the boat, then put it in the water. I’ll tell [the traffickers] you can come with me. When you get there, you can pay the money.”
Abram admitted he had been booted out of the Netherlands having lived there illegally for 16 years (Image: Express Report)
In a separate exchange, a group of Kurdish smugglers was caught on camera promising to take our reporter to Britain for £1,800. Once the deal was agreed, he was escorted to a tent where traffickers housed migrants ahead of attempted Channel crossings. As he was shown to the camp, our undercover reporter recorded the gang discussing logistics.
“These two can’t go,” the member of the group organising the tented area shouted to the trafficker showing our reporter to his tent. “[The boat] is full.”
“No, no,” he responded. “He’ll wait here until morning. I swear on my name, if it’s about you counting the money, then I tell you: we are making three groups. Do you understand?”
Having cut the deal with the traffickers, we had to remove our reporter from the camp as the smugglers began pursuing him for cash to pay for the crossing.
Alp Mehmet, chairman of Migration Watch, said the investigation showed “more evidence of the Starmer administration’s mind-boggling failure to deter migrants from making their way here illegally.”
“We are seen as soft-touch fools who won’t turn them back,” he added. “While the gendarmes wait for migrants to set sail and then claim it’s too late to do anything about it?
“We have paid or committed to pay France over a billion pounds in the past three years while they allow these people to enter their country, move about freely and make their way to the UK. Clearly, France and the European Commission see our government for what it is. Mugs.
“They’re not wrong. No one arriving in a dinghy without documents should be permitted to stay. They must be detained and swiftly returned. Only such action will stem the tide.”
A Home Office spokesperson said: “Foreign criminals trying to cross the Channel by small boat waste their time and money, as all small boat arrivals go through robust security checks, checked against international data and criminal databases.”
