17 members of an alleged human smuggling gang whose suspected victims were mainly from Afghanistan are currently being held in police custody, French officials said on Saturday.
The alleged people smugglers were arrested in Loon Plage, a town wedged between the northern French port cities of Calais and Dunkirk, on Friday night on suspicion of smuggling illegal immigrants under or across the English Channel and into Britain, a police source close to the case told French media.
The majority of the suspects currently being interrogated by Calais police are “from Romania,” the source said, adding the smuggling ring worked with “migrants from different nationalities, but for the most part Afghans”.
The “wave” of arrests took place as the alleged gang members were getting ready to smuggle an undisclosed number of migrants into Britain, the source added.
Members of France’s border security force, the police aux frontières or PAF, had been investigating the suspects on suspicion of orchestrating illegal border crossings “for months,” the anonymous source added.
In France, people suspected of migrant trafficking can be held without charge for up to four days.
French President Emmanuel Macron is set to toughen France’s immigration and asylum policy in a controversial bill which is to be debated next month, and which has already been slammed by his political opponents and rights activists as “inhumane”.
The young centrist has pledged to speed up asylum processing requests made by those fleeing war, famine or persecution; while also ensuring that those who do not qualify are dealt with more firmly, saying that France could not take in “all” economic migrants.
Earlier this month Mr Macron also asked British prime minister Theresa May to take in more Calais refugees and contribute more financially towards securing the Franco-British border, which sits on the French side of the Channel.
Mrs May promptly agreed to pay France £44.5 million to continue to police the border in Calais and set up a joint operation to process asylum seeker claims in the port city.