Traffickers enlist cash-strapped French to smuggle migrants to the UK

People traffickers in France are offering large sums of money to cash-strapped French people to smuggle migrants into the UK illegally.

Emmanuelle Osmont, a lawyer based in the northern city of Boulogne-sur-Mer, told Newsweek that the first such case came to court two weeks ago and there are now worries that increasing numbers of French locals may accept such offers in order to make money.

There are thousands of migrants encamped in Calais who make the two-hour trip from their campsite, known as 'the Jungle', to the entrance to the Channel Tunnel or the ferry every day to attempt to sneak on to lorries or cars travelling to the UK. However, recruiting French citizens to help take migrants across in their own cars is a new tactic.

Osmont represented a couple were stopped by police who found a migrant in their car. "They run a business and were facing major financial problems," she says, citing the problems in the local economy.

"They were approached by a trafficker in a coffee shop. He became their friend, he asked them about their situation, their problems and a few weeks after they met he proposed that they could transport some people to make some money. He didn't tell him that he was from a mafia organization."

The couple, who have four daughters, were offered €2,000 to smuggle one person, an offer they accepted. The major problems Osmont says is that French people are firstly not aware of the serious criminal aspect of what they are doing, but also are naive about the kind of people they could be getting involved with.

Although this was the first case in Boulogne-sur-Mer, French news site The Local yesterday reported that three students were brought before a court in Lisle after being caught trying to take a migrant into the UK in the boot of their car. "They were found because the car was too heavy," Osmont explains. "The police knew there was someone in the car and they found the migrant in the boot of the car." The students had been offered between €1,000 and €2,000 to take the journey, although as Osmont points out, the traffickers are paid up to €5,000 by the migrants to get them into the UK.

"These people don't know how many years they are risking, they know it's silly but they don't really know the risk," she says. "It's not just a friend, it's a mafia organisation. They have arms, guns, kalashnikovs, so it's dangerous for local people to do business with these people. They don't know who these people are."

These 'part-time people smugglers' could face three to five years in prison if found guilty of helping to traffic people. However, in the case of the couple the court was more lenient. Osmont says this is because they had a family and a business, but also because it was the first case of its kind and clear they had not truly understood the implications of what they were doing.

Maya Konforti who works with l'Auberge des Migrants, an aid group based in Calais, says that she has not heard about these kind of offers being made in the Jungle. "I think when it happens it doesn't happen in Calais, but from Paris or another city so we don't see it here. The students and people who don't have much money are approached in the suburbs of Paris or places like that, and then they get caught when they're at the tunnel or at the ferry. The people at Calais trying to get on the ferry are doing it for free."

Osmont explains that the main concern now is for local governments and police forces to warn French people of the dangers of these offers. "We can't do anything apart from warn people through the press. We need to tell people to be careful and as soon as they have conversations with the traffickers they need to go to the police and denounce them, because otherwise they may find themselves facing a lot of pressure to do it."