The number of migrants being smuggled into Britain in containers and lorries rose in the last year before today’s discovery of 39 bodies in a refrigerated truck.
Authorities said the number of potential victims of human trafficking and modern slavery has continued to rise, with 6,993 cases in 2018 – up 36 per cent on 2017.
Europol data has revealed how migrants from North Africa and the Middle East are making their way to Britain using a variety of complicated networks across Europe.
People smugglers are increasingly using other routes after the Calais migrant camps were shut in 2015 and the Channel Tunnel’s security measures improved.
This Europol graphic shows the common routes taken by migrants to get to Europe and the UK. The images (right) shows two other occasions when migrants were found dead
In 2000, 58 Chinese migrants were found dead in Dover (pictured above is the container)
In 2014, 38 Afghan Sikhs were also found in a shipping container in Tilbury
Migrants are often hid in the back of a lorry, but commercial shipping containers are also being used more increasingly – some of which are refrigerated.
Smuggling figures from the National Crime Agency emerged after the emergency services found the bodies early today at Waterglade Industrial Park in Grays, Essex.
Police at the Waterglade Industrial Park in Grays today after 39 bodies were found in a lorry
Police believe the trailer went from Zeebrugge in Belgium into nearby Purfleet, and docked shortly after 12.30am – with the tractor unit originating in Northern Ireland.
Two of the biggest disasters involving migrant smuggling in recent decades also involved Zeebrugge – with 58 Chinese stowaways dying on the way from Belgium in 2000, and 36 Afghan Sikhs found inside a shipping container in Tilbury in 2014 after travelling from the same location.
Police believe the trailer went from Zeebrugge in Belgium into nearby Purfleet, and docked shortly after 12.30am – with the tractor unit originating in Northern Ireland
People smugglers are charging migrants from Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa up to £10,000 a time for the journey to get to Britain in the back of a truck.
Home Secretary Priti Patel, who is also the MP for Witham in Essex, has signalled she is willing to consider tougher sentences for human traffickers.
Ms Patel told MPs she was ‘very happy to discuss with the Ministry of Justice to see what more we can do’ as she made a statement in the Commons on the incident.
Her comments came as Independent MP John Woodcock asked if Ms Patel would commit to reviewing the sentencing guidelines for human trafficking.
Bulgaria’s Foreign Ministry said today that truck in which the bodies were found was registered in Bulgaria by a company owned by an Irish woman.
Police forensics officers investigate after 39 bodies were found at the industrial estate today
The lorry where 39 people were found dead inside leaves Waterglade Industrial Park today
‘The Scania truck was registered in the city of Varna under the name of a company owned by an Irish citizen,’ the ministry said in a statement.
Bulgarian public broadcaster BNR, citing unnamed sources, said the truck, which has been registered in Bulgaria on June 19, 2017, had left the Balkan country the next day and has not returned since.
In May, the NCA said there had been ‘increasing use of higher risk methods of clandestine entry’ to the UK by organised immigration crime gangs who move people across borders illegally.
Its annual national strategic assessment report said: ‘These include the movement of migrants (including children) into the UK in containers, refrigerated HGVs and small boats, at a high risk to life of those migrants smuggled.’
In a separate annual report for 2018-19, it said the ‘majority of clandestine attempts to enter the UK involve concealments in HGV and other motor vehicles from Calais, Zeebrugge or through the Eurotunnel’.
This came after it warned in April that crime gangs were attempting to smuggle migrants into the UK at ‘less busy’ ports after a clampdown in security at major ones.
The multi-million pound Project Invigor was launched in 2017 to tackle high-risk people smuggling.
It has been trying to gather intelligence in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa as well as countries which would be passed through in transit to target and disrupt organised crime groups operating along the whole route.
A document setting out the programme – which is expected to run until 2020 led by the NCA, working with the Home Office, Border Force, police, Crown Prosecution Service and EU law enforcement – said migrant smuggling was a ‘multi-national business’ and organised crime groups involved originate from all over the world, ‘making billions of dollars per year’.
Flowers are left today near the scene in Waterglade Industrial Park in Grays after the discovery
The exact scale of the problem is unknown and the NCA is yet to publish statistics on most of its work in this area.
But it does say the number of potential victims of human trafficking and modern slavery reported to the National Referral Mechanism (NRM) – has continued to rise.
The NRM programme was set up to identify and support victims and may include those who came to the UK as a result of people smuggling, although investigators believe this could be a small percentage of the overall figure.
The figures may be able to give some idea of the scale of the problem but are not specific to people smuggling.
It comes after the Calais migrant crisis hit its peak in 2015 when hundreds of people were trying to get into the Eurotunnel terminal at Coquelles every night.
The worst disaster since 58 were killed in a tomato lorry in Kent
Today’s incident in Essex has chilling echoes of a tragedy 19 years ago in Kent in which 58 Chinese stowaways died on the way from Belgium to Britain.
Customs officers discovered the bodies of 54 men and four women in the back of a tomato lorry which arrived in Dover on June 18, 2000.
The migrants had suffocated after their air vent was closed. Driver Perry Wacker was later jailed for 14 years for manslaughter.
A total of 58 Chinese migrants were killed in 2000 when they suffocated in the back of a tomato lorry arriving at the Port of Dover
The container lorry that carried dead asylum seekers into Dover docks in June 2000
He had shut the trailer’s air vent because he was worried about noise alerting Customs. Detectives believe Wacker would have received around £300 for each immigrant.
In August 2014, 36 Afghan Sikhs, including 15 children, were found inside a shipping container at Tilbury Docks in Essex, close to today’s incident.
One man in the container, Meet Singh Kapoor, 40, died during an overnight crossing from Belgium.
Police said the group, who were part of the Sikh minority in their home country and were fleeing persecution there, had suffered a ‘horrendous ordeal’.
In 2016, two human traffickers were jailed for 17 years after being convicted at Basildon Crown Court of conspiracy to facilitate illegal entry into the UK.
The scene inside the container lorry in which 58 died at Dover in June 2000
The driver of that lorry was later jailed for 14 years for manslaughter. Right: A Daily Mail front page from the tragedy in Dover in 2000
Stephen McLaughlin, 49, and Martin McGlinchey, 36, were sentenced after the court heard Mr Kapoor’s family were forced to watch him die of natural causes.
In October 2001, a van load of 26 Sri Lankan refugees were found near to suffocation at Dover Docks after crossing from Calais in a van on a ferry.
The group, three of them women, were suffering from dehydration and the effects of breathing in fumes when they were discovered by Customs inspectors.
Police said at the time: ‘They had very little air left and time was running out for them. If it had been a little while later they were found, they may not have been alive.’
And in August 2015, 71 migrants including four children and a baby died in the back of a refrigerated lorry which was then dumped at the side of an Austrian motorway.
In 2015, 71 migrants including four children and a baby died in this meat lorry in Austria
Migrants from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan were among the victims who suffocated in the lorry in Hungary before it was found near Parndorf in Austria in 2015.
The group had made their way to the Serbian border with Hungary before being packed into the air-tight poultry lorry. Austrian police later found the bodies piled on top of each other.
The deaths in August 2015 led Germany’s Angela Merkel to say she would open the country’s borders to refugees, eventually allowing in more than one million people.
Today’s incident is thought to be the biggest case of mass murder in Britain for 14 years since the terror attacks on the London transport network on 7/7 in 2005, which left 56 dead including the four suicide bombers.
The death toll is also higher than that of tragedies such as the Manchester Arena bombing in May 2017, which left 23 people dead including attacker Salman Abedi.
The total is also well above that of the Dunblane school massacre near Stirling in Scotland in March 1996 in which 18 people died including shooter Thomas Hamilton.