21 jailed for smuggling migrants from UK to France at $1,800 a person
Members of a people-smuggling network have received prison sentences totaling more than 84 years for an operation that moved migrants from Britain to France to work illegally in the EU. The National Crime Agency intercepted 10 attempted crossings and detained 196 migrants.
Mariam Al Mansoori
Prison terms for organizers and drivers
Shuhal Ahmed, 44, led the East London-based network and received its longest sentence: eight and a half years. He admitted people-smuggling offenses. The 21 people jailed included London-based organizers and drivers from Romania and North Macedonia.
His lieutenant, Suhel Ahmed, 26, handled the $1,800 payments from migrants and paid taxi drivers to deliver them to trucks in Kent. He received a seven-year sentence after a trial.
Suhel Ahmed was among five defendants convicted of facilitating illegal immigration at Canterbury Crown Court on October 22, 2026. The three-week trial also involved taxi drivers Md Ali Hossain, 43, Syed Ahmed, 40, Kamal Chowdhury, 47, and Shamim Ahmed, 48. All five had denied the charges. Hossain and Syed Ahmed were each sentenced to six years.
Robiul Islam, a 50-year-old minicab driver, admitted his role and was sentenced to five years. He took migrants from London to vehicles waiting in Kent and arranged for other drivers to make the journey. Nicusor Lacatus, 54, of Romania, recruited truck and van drivers prepared to carry migrants for money; he received six years after a trial.
Before the final hearings, 13 network members had already received prison terms ranging from two to six years, according to the NCA.
The route through Kent
The operation served migrants primarily from Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, as well as some from Nepal. Drivers took them from London to Kent in southeast England, where the gang had arranged for paid truck drivers to carry them to France aboard Channel ferries.
NCA surveillance documented 10 attempted smuggling runs between July 2025 and January 2026. Officers intercepted all 10, detaining 196 migrants.
Agency footage shows different stages of the operation: migrants gathering at an industrial park to board trucks, thermal images of people crowded inside a vehicle, and officers opening a truck and a van to discover migrants packed in the back.
The NCA said most of those being transported were legally in Britain at the time. Their aim was to evade EU visa restrictions, rather than UK immigration controls.
Visa restrictions and travel toward France
Although British efforts against immigration crime have largely centered on small boats arriving across the Channel, demand for clandestine journeys in the opposite direction has grown. Outside the EU, Britain has become a staging point for migrants seeking to bypass the bloc's border checks. Those checks can identify someone who overstays a tourist visa; entering France undetected in a vehicle allows a migrant to avoid that scrutiny.
A 2026 policy note by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) offers one local measure of travel toward France. A Dover Outreach Centre support worker recorded 155 migrants passing through Dover in that direction in 2025, up from 100 in 2024, an increase of 55%.
The same note puts the Schengen visa refusal rate for Bangladeshi nationals at roughly 55%, compared with an overall EU rate below 15%. It also reports a 71% increase in UK-sponsored study visas issued to Bangladeshi nationals in 2025 and says Britain stopped tracking visa overstayers after 2020.
Other UK-to-France smuggling cases
An Algerian-led gang that also packed migrants into trucks for journeys from Britain to France was dismantled in 2025, and its senior members were convicted.
The GI-TOC policy note describes the south London-based Belabes network, which arranged at least 26 trips from December 2022 through September 2023. At £1,200 per person, its estimated proceeds over that period were £287,000.
It also describes a parallel operation led by Algerian national Azize Benaniba. Over a similar period, that network facilitated more than 20 journeys from Dover to Calais, hiding migrants in airtight, refrigerated trailers. Some of the children transported were as young as five.
In another case recorded in the note, two Romanian truck drivers were arrested in Dover in September 2025 after 49 people were found in their vehicles. Most were Bangladeshi nationals.
NCA says network was dismantled
The investigation comes amid an expansion of the NCA's immigration-crime work. According to the GI-TOC note, staffing assigned to organized immigration crime grew from 376 officers at the beginning of 2025 to nearly 800 by August 2026.
For the year ending in April 2026, the note reports approximately 300 arrests, an increase of more than half, along with 59 convictions and 400 recorded disruptions. It also says more than 1,100 boats and engines had been seized since July 2024.
John Turner, the NCA's senior investigating officer, described the case as a "significant investigation" into a "major people-smuggling network".
"Our investigation has seen the entire criminal network dismantled, from the organisers right down to the drivers employed to transport migrants illegally," he said.
"I hope it sends out a warning to those who would consider getting involved, and think there is money to be made from smuggling people in either direction across the Channel. The chances of getting caught have never been higher. It simply isn't worth it."
