Gang leaders, corrupt officials, police officers, fake passport dealers and companies supplying small boats could be among those publicly named in UK sanctions targeting people-smuggling.
The measures, that are due to be unveiled on Wednesday, are central to Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer‘s plan to clamp down on small boat crossings by going after the global criminal networks behind them.
Dozens of individuals and entities are expected to be hit with asset freezes, travel bans, and restrictions from engaging with the UK’s financial system under the sanctions.
It comes as the government comes under growing pressure to stem the flow of small boat crossings.
Sir Keir has pledged to “smash” people-smuggling gangs and made tackling illegal migration at source a key election pledge last year.
Foreign Secretary David Lammy said the sanctions regime was “the first of its kind anywhere on the planet” and a key step in ending “the status quo” where criminal gangs prey on “vulnerable people with impunity”.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he added: “We are leading, others will follow.”
In the first six months of this year, more than 20,000 people crossed in small boats, an increase of nearly 50% on the previous year, according to Home Office data.
Dr Madeleine Sumption, deputy chair of the Migration Advisory Committee, said she would be “surprised” if the sanctions were a “game changer for the industry as a whole, and for the existence of the small boats route”.
“There are so many people involved in the industry that targeting people individually is probably only going to have an impact around the margins,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
She added: “The impact is dependent to an extent on the co-operation of other countries where smugglers are operating.”
Ministers say the new sanctions will target immigration crime gangs “where traditional law enforcement and criminal justice approaches cannot reach”.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said the new sanctions regime is a “decisive step in our fight against the criminal gangs who profit from human misery”.
“It will allow us to target the assets and operations of people-smugglers wherever they operate, cutting off their funding and dismantling their networks piece by piece,” she said.=
The announcement comes after tensions in Essex at the weekend during a protest outside a hotel used to house asylum seekers, which was triggered after the arrest and charge of an asylum seeker on suspicion of alleged sexual assaults.
Police said the protest descended into “mindless thuggery” after flares and bottles were thrown towards officers.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage described the people protesting as “genuinely concerned families” and said parts of the country are “close… to civil disobedience on a vast scale”.
