{"id":1065036,"date":"2026-07-03T02:55:22","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T02:55:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1065036\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T02:55:22","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T02:55:22","slug":"the-people-smuggler-who-shows-brexit-has-made-britain-less-safe-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1065036\/","title":{"rendered":"The people smuggler who shows Brexit has made Britain less safe"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is no disrespect \u2013 indeed, quite the opposite \u2013 to wonder why the BBC\u2019s investigative reporter Sue Mitchell<\/a> and her colleagues succeeded where the British state failed, having managed to track down and question one of Europe\u2019s most prolific people traffickers.<\/p>\n

Filmed casually sweeping the pavement outside one of his mini-marts in Blaby, near Leicester, Ms Mitchell confronted Twana Jamal<\/a> with the evidence of his various crimes, which at first he denied, and then remarked: \u201cI don’t care.”<\/p>\n

Known by a variety of names, Jamal \u2013 an Iraqi Kurd who became the self-styled \u201cking\u201d of the Calais jungle and the \u201cgodfather\u201d of the grim trade in human misery \u2013 is said to once have made some \u00a3100,000 a week in this sadly lucrative trade. And he is not the only such people smuggler identified by Ms Mitchell. More than 20 have been found to have reached the UK \u2013 some with convictions in other countries, some having claimed asylum using false names.<\/p>\n

On the face of it, then, the BBC seems more capable of \u201csmashing the gangs\u201d<\/a> than the combined resources of the police, National Crime Agency, Border Force, the Home Office, the Secret Intelligence Service, and all the other agencies that the prime minister gathered together for a high-profile Cobra meeting upon his election two years ago.<\/p>\n

And yet the boats are still crossing the English Channel<\/a>, in broadly the same numbers as before \u2013 and the likes of Jamal are given indefinite leave to remain<\/a> in the UK, despite doing so with false credentials, violating the rules on working, and with a criminal record acquired in France, where the court paid him the backhanded compliment for being one of the most successful in his business.<\/p>\n

Whatever view is taken of the merits of the asylum seekers\u2019 cases and the lack of safe and secure routes \u2013 which does push innocent people fleeing torture into the hands of the smugglers \u2013 every overcrowded boat that tries to make the journey to Britain risks the lives of those onboard. The organisers care only about their profit margins.<\/p>\n

It is an evil as well as an illegal trade, and one with a seemingly infinite capacity to adapt, and to evade detection and prosecution. It isn\u2019t easy for the authorities, or even journalists, to catch the perpetrators \u2013 and even when they do, inevitably, others come forward to replace them. It is a business with a ready demand from migrants, be they \u201ceconomic\u201d or refugees, or with some mixture of motives; and an equally ready supply of those willing to transport them, and in hazardous ways.<\/p>\n

That, fundamentally, is why the activity has been so difficult to close down. It\u2019s important, in that context, to understand that the reason why the small boats have become such a phenomenon is because the previous method of choice, hiding in lorries<\/a>, had been effectively eliminated through tighter security at the crossings.<\/p>\n

\"Twana<\/p>\n

Twana Jamal, a convicted people smuggler in France, was found working illegally near Leicester while he applied for asylum (BBC) (BBC)<\/p>\n

To be fair, the Border Security Command \u2013 launched in July 2024, in wake of the prime minister\u2019s first Cobra meeting \u2013 has had some success, boasting some 3,625 \u201cdisruptions\u201d of one kind or another last year.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not enough. Certainly, it hasn\u2019t lived up to the government\u2019s high expectations. Its first chief, Martin Hewitt, has already resigned, reportedly frustrated with lack of progress, and a new permanent head is yet to be appointed.<\/p>\n

Sir Keir had promised the same cross-agency approach and similar success as has been applied to the fight against terrorism. Yet Jamal is still at large somewhere in the East Midlands, driving about without a licence.<\/p>\n

There are some obvious and urgent steps that need to be taken. Somehow, the government has to regain access to the intelligence material and asylum claim records<\/a> lost when the UK left the European Union. The fact that the UK doesn\u2019t know if an asylum seeker has already had a claim rejected in an EU nation is bad in itself; but it creates a powerful added incentive for the unsuccessful to try to reach Britain to have another go.<\/p>\n

Fixing this data deficit should be as important a goal as anything else in the \u201creset\u201d of relations now underway. There is also a growing political consensus, in Britain and in other signatory nations, that the European Convention on Human Rights<\/a> can be too easily manipulated by people who themselves have robbed their fellow human beings of their rights, up to and including the right to life itself.<\/p>\n

The backlog of asylum seekers built up when the Conservatives simply refused to process them because they were \u201cillegal\u201d is being cleared, but has to be eliminated in order to facilitate swift returns and close asylum hotels. Shabana Mahmood has proved determined in her mission to regain public trust in the system, against the odds.<\/p>\n

But the embarrassing case of Twana Jamal shows just how much more there is to do to preserve the precious right of asylum from its abuse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It is no disrespect \u2013 indeed, quite the opposite \u2013 to wonder why the BBC\u2019s investigative reporter Sue…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1065037,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5226],"tags":[2527,802,748,277918,2000,299,5187,1699,4884,292222,292223,292220,292219,292221,16,15],"class_list":["post-1065036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brexit","tag-asylum-seekers","tag-brexit","tag-britain","tag-british-state","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-european","tag-european-union","tag-great-britain","tag-investigative-reporter","tag-lucrative-trade","tag-secret-intelligence-service","tag-sue-mitchell","tag-twana-jamal","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116853797423941372","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1065036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1065036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1065036\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1065037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1065036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1065036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1065036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}