Collective action to tackle people smuggling adverts online

UK and allies including the United States yesterday pledged further action to prevent people smugglers using social media channels to advertise and facilitate organised immigration crime.

In an agreement secured at the UK's Organised Immigration Crime Summit, the UK, Albania, Sweden, Tunisia, United States and Vietnam have agreed collective action to get governments, organisations, and industry partners to work together to prevent the misuse of online platforms and social media sites to facilitate illegal migration.

People smuggling gangs are exploiting online platforms and social media sites – such as TikTok and Meta – on an increasing scale to advertise and facilitate small boat crossings and other illegal migration services, generating illegal profits at the expense of vulnerable migrants.

While ramped up law enforcement action has seen 18,000 social media accounts used to sell spaces on boats taken down by the National Crime Agency since July – 10,000 more than last year – further action is needed to take on the gangs promoting these adverts.

Representatives from X, Tik Tok, and Meta attended the Organised Immigration Crime Summit to set out the work they are doing to remove damaging adverts placed on their site by criminal smuggling gangs and understand how they can work with governments.

The agreement sets out how countries will:

• Work with social media companies to design out opportunities for criminal gangs to advertise and glorify illegal migration.
• Work with digital platforms to help them invest in strong detection and moderation tools to tackle Organised Immigration Crime (OIC) online, and to support this with effective laws and through international cooperation.
• Agree to share trends to work together to understand how organised crime groups use online platforms and key approaches to detect and disrupt how people smuggling gangs facilitate OIC online.

Countries agreed to continue to work together to ensure a strong global response to people smugglers abusing online platforms to facilitate illegal migration.

Martin Hewitt, Border Security Commander, said:

“Criminal gangs are exploiting online platforms to prey on vulnerable people, luring them into dangerous and illegal journeys that undermine our border security. This international agreement is a vital step in shutting down their online operations and dismantling their networks across the world.

“These organised crime groups operate across borders, which is why the UK has united with five nations to take decisive action – strengthening intelligence-sharing and taking away platforms that these criminals depend on for their business.

“Under the Government's Plan for Change, we will continue working with global partners to dismantle smuggling networks, bring perpetrators to justice, and protect vulnerable people from falling into their hands.”

Yesterday saw the second day of the Organised Immigration Crime summit in London co-hosted by Border Security Commander Martin Hewitt and Director General Graeme Biggar.

Law enforcement leads from over 40 countries came together to discuss how strengthen the international response to Organised Immigration Crime, and agreed a number of actions:

• Increased intelligence sharing between countries, law enforcement agencies, Europol and Interpol to enhance collective understanding of organised crime gangs and target illicit finances and supply chains linked to them.
• The UK will lead further intensive work with other countries to improve collective understanding of how criminal gangs use online platforms to bolster the law enforcement operational response to OIC, and create a shared model to set out the full spectrum of collective capabilities that can be used to disrupt and dismantle the criminal gangs involved in people smuggling.

Director General of the National Crime Agency (NCA) Graeme Biggar said:

“Yesterday we saw law enforcement from over 40 nations come together in a shared endeavour to stop these criminal gangs. We have explored challenges, sought solutions, and reinforced our shared commitment to tackling the threat and harm caused by people smuggling. 

“International intelligence sharing and cooperation is absolutely crucial to track criminal activity across borders allowing us to put a stop to these dangerous criminals, and this summit has ensured that we can build on our work to put a stop to these gangs, protect our borders and save lives.

Day two of the Summit featured a number of sessions with law enforcement leads, including:

• Collaboration to tackle the criminal people smuggling networks, sharing best practice in identifying and conducting end-to-end disruption of them.

• Tackling key enablers such as the use of online and social media to advertise and connect migrants with criminal facilitators.

• Stopping the role of illicit finance including informal value transfer services and other money laundering models that help to drive this crime.

• Disrupting supply chains with a focus on international efforts, small boats equipment to demonstrate the UK approach to targeting offenders and highlight the need for collaboration between law enforcement around the world to share lessons learned and find new ways to tackle the threat.

Discussion between nations will take place post the Summit, with further collaboration efforts across borders to tackle this global threat expected to happen over the coming months.