Smuggler selling ‘fast track’ Channel crossing speaks to BBC undercover reporter

BBC ^ | Oct 28 | Andrew Harding, Khue Luu & Patrick Clahane

[RandFan]

The Vietnamese people smuggler emerged, briefly and hesitantly, from the shadows of a scraggly forest close to the northern French coastline.

“Move away from the others. Come this way, fast,” he said, gesturing across a disused railway line to a member of our team, who had spent weeks posing undercover as a potential customer.

Moments later, the smuggler - a tall figure with bright dyed blonde hair - turned away sharply, like a startled fox, and vanished down a narrow path into the woods.

Earlier this year, Vietnam emerged - abruptly - as the biggest single source of new migrants seeking to cross the Channel to the UK illegally in small boats. Arrivals surged from 1,306 in the whole of 2023, to 2,248 in the first half of 2024.

Our investigation - including interviews with Vietnamese smugglers and clients, French police, prosecutors and charities - reveals how Vietnamese migrants are paying double the usual rate for an “elite” small boat smuggling experience that is faster and more streamlined. As the death toll in the Channel hits a record level this year, there are some indications that it might be safer too.

As part of our work to penetrate the Vietnamese operations, we met an experienced smuggler who is operating in the UK and forging documents for migrants seeking to reach Europe. Separately, our undercover reporter - posing as a Vietnamese migrant - arranged, by phone and text, to meet a smuggling gang operating in the woods near Dunkirk in order to find out how the process works.

“A small boat service is £2,600. Payment to be made after you arrive in the UK,”

[RandFan]

The smuggler himself is an illegal criminal alien (the BBC admits) who seems to travel around freely. Extraordinary.

[Regulator]

[redfreedom]

And I thought communist Vietnam was such a paradise. Or so many here on FR have claimed.

But I must give credit, they did not murder at the rate Pol Pot, Mao or Stalin did. And they came about with a near free market economy faster than the other two. And their girls are still pretty.