Almost £1 million towards combatting smuggling gang leaders

Nearly £1 million government funding is to towards supporting Iraq to combat organised immigration crime through hunting down those at the top of smuggling gangs networks.

The home secretary’s partnership with Iraq will help both tackle organised immigration crime as well as strengthen border security in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). The boosting in funding from the UK will go towards passing new anti-smuggling legislation in the KRI, as well as to provide targeted training, specialist technological support, and community engagement to address key security challenges in the region.

The implementation of the new law will boost wider National Crime Agency (NCA) operations, which already had more than 70 investigations ongoing into top tier immigration crime networks.

The UK-Iraq partnership has led to a further crackdown on the use of fraudulent documents by people smuggling gangs to move migrants through the Iraqi border, with the UK distributing specialist forgery detection devices across forensic labs in Erbil, Sulaymaniyah and Dohuk.

A collaboration between the Home Office, NCA and International partners is also working to target the business model of these criminal networks, including their use of social media platforms, financial flows and maritime equipment. This strategy has been successful so far, with other 8,000 social media accounts taken down in 2024.

Following the news is the Organised Immigration Crime Summit which started yesterday (31st March 2025), which is being hosted by the home secretary and the prime minister.

Minister for security, Dan Jarvis, said: “The ‘Mr Bigs’ of people-smuggling gangs are cowards who hide in other countries and use their stooges to do their dirty work, while they count the grubby blood money they receive. They do not care about the people they are endangering who are going recklessly crammed into increasingly crowded, flimsy boats.

“We are using every power in our disposal to hunt them down, bring them to justice and dismantle their evil people smuggling networks. The UK’s partnership with Iraq is a cornerstone in this fight, with both of our countries making significant progress in just a matter of months. Criminal ‘lords’ in Iraq who had previously thought themselves untouchable are now being sent a clear message that their abhorrent business model will fail.”