At 5.30am on Tuesday, six immigration enforcement officers and a BBC TV crew gathered in a deserted B&Q car park near Sheffield’s railway station, waiting in the rain for a call from London that would trigger simultaneous arrests of suspected people smugglers in six towns.
Forty minutes later, theHome Officestaff drove in convoy to a nearby residential block (followed by the BBC and the Guardian), made their way up the stairs carrying a red battering ram, ready to smash the suspect’s door down. The equipment wasn’t needed, because the man, barefoot in his checked pyjamas, opened the door and let the team inside. He was given a few moments to get dressed, before being taken silently in handcuffs to the van outside, sweat running down his face.
Footage of the wider operation was broadcast that night on the BBC and also ITV News at 10, with the security minister, Dan Jarvis, in Cheltenham, wearing a black immigration enforcement stab vest, observing another of the six linked arrests.
Keir Starmerposted photographs of the raidson X, tersely announcing: “When I said we would smash the people smuggling gangs, I meant it.”
It was a useful bit of positive messaging, carefully facilitated by the Home Office press office, in a week when ministers have been confronted with uncomfortable evidence that their efforts to prevent the arrival of small boats are flailing just as spectacularly as those of the last government.
Last Saturday 1,195 people arrived in the UK on 18 small boats, the highest number of arrivals this year, bringing the provisional total for 2025 to 14,811; 42% higher than the same point last year (10,448) and 95% up from the same point in 2023 (7,610). The defence secretary, John Healey, said Britain had “lost control of its borders over the last five years”.
The Home Office tried to explain the rising numbers by releasing figures showing that the number of “red days” – when weather conditions are favourable for small boats crossings – peaked in 2024-25.
Conservative opposition MPs accused the government of “blaming the weather”. “Public opinion won’t put up with this,” the Reform UK party leader, Nigel Farage, told GB News, urging the government again to declare a national emergency on illegal immigration.
With Reform’s popularity ratings surging, the government is under enormous political pressure to show that its much-advertised “smash the gangs” policy is beginning to work. Last week’s raids were flagged as an anti-gangs success, but they turned out to be entirely unconnected to people smuggling in small boats. The six people who were arrested on suspicion of facilitating illegal entry are believed to have helped at least 200 Botswana nationals to travel to the UK by plane on tourist visas, and to have assisted them with false documentation on arrival to claim asylum or to get work in care homes.
The criminal and financial investigation unit of the Home Office’s immigration enforcement team said this was one of the department’s top 10 immigration investigations, ranked by potential financial gain, number of people involved and risk of harm to victims exploited by the gang.
Reminding the home secretary that small boat crossings were “one of the biggest challenges your department faces”, theLabourMP Chris Murray asked Yvette Cooper at a home affairs select committee hearing: “Can you tell us how many gangs you’ve smashed so far?”
The home secretary gave some details about the arrests that morning, prompting Murray to respond with enthusiasm: “When I asked that question, I did not expect you to say you had smashed a gang today!”
In its manifesto, Labour made it clear that the policy of launching a new border security command with hundreds of new specialist investigators using counter-terror powers was designed to “smash criminal boat gangs”.
The arrests may have represented a significant development for Home Office staff trying to crack down on the exploitation of vulnerable people trafficked into the UK and criminalised by being forced to work illegally, but packaging this as a major breakthrough in the smash the gangs drive has prompted some raised eyebrows.
One former Home Office official described taking TV cameras to these arrests as a sleight of hand, a PR exercise designed to detract attention from a small boats policy that he said had so far been a “damp squib”.
Peter Walsh, a senior researcher with the migration observatory at Oxford University, said the government should be given some leeway because theborder security, asylum and immigration bill, which will bring in the much-trailed counter-terror style powers to help identify and control smuggling gangs, has not yet been passed. “Overall it’s too early to evaluate their ‘smash the gangs’ policy, because the main legislative developments are in that bill,” he said. “But it would be difficult to describe whatever has been done operationally so far to disrupt smuggling networks as a success, because the numbers [of small boats] have gone up.”
Starmer’s catchy “smash the gangs” slogan risks becoming almost as much of a millstone ashis predecessor Rishi Sunak’s commitment to “stop the boats”. Sunak’s pledge was described as impossible to achieve the moment he announced it, but he continued toput out videos repeating his promise, and gave immigration control speechesstanding behind a lectern with a “stop the boats” logo.
Labour may eventually be able to show some progress on dismantling organised people smuggling operations by citing rising arrest figures. The Home Office press office said that, from July to November 2024, its immigration enforcement teams have convicted 53 people smugglers, including 23 individuals for piloting small boats, leading to more than 52 years in sentences. But Walsh questioned whether these arrests would have a discernible impact on the number of people crossing the Channel in small boats.
“It doesn’t require substantial investment in training and skills to have a functional smuggler on the ground, getting boats into the water in Calais, getting people into boats. But it takes a lot of resources to investigate them and bring them to justice. One of the major challenges is that lower-level smugglers can quickly be replaced,” Walsh said, pointing, as a comparison, to the speed with which gangs dealing drugs hire new recruits to replace those arrested.
“Smuggling networks are adaptable. They’re increasingly well financed and decentralised. Senior figures operate in countries like Afghanistan, where we have minimal or no law enforcement cooperation.”
Campaigners for an overhaul of the asylum system have been dismayed by Labour’s resolutely tough rhetoric on those crossing the Channel illegally, which often fails to acknowledge that many arrivals are coming from war-torn nations such as Afghanistan, Syria, and Eritrea. This week, aresearch paper published by Border Criminologies and the Centre for Criminology at the University of Oxfordfound that hundreds of those imprisoned for arriving in the UK on small boats since 2022 were refugees and victims of trafficking and torture, in breach of international law. It said at least 17 children had been arrested and charged with “facilitation”, for having their hand on the tiller of a dinghy.
Enver Solomon, the chief executive of the Refugee Council, said the government should “dial down the rhetoric”, and adopt a quieter multi-pronged approach, cooperating more deeply with France and other European countries, undermining the business model of the gangs by creating safe and legal routes for people to apply for asylum in the UK.
“The more you make announcements on a week-by-week basis, the more you give the impression to the public that you’re going to fix the problem very quickly, so you end up falling into the trap of damaging trust because you’re overpromising and underdelivering,” he said.
It is a message that Starmer’s comms team has yet to learn. In asecond tweet on the subject of smashing the gangs in the space of 24 hoursthis week, the prime minister announced: “My government is ramping up our efforts to smash the gangs at their source.” Attached was a video montage of boats, barbed wire, police vans and men being arrested, overlaid with the words (in emphatic capitals) “OUR PLAN IS WORKING”.