Secondary movement of migrants through Western Europe: the misuse of legitimate transport actors as smuggling facilitators
Image featuring a razor wire on top of a green fence. Image credit: iStock
2 November 2023
Recent incidents in which legitimate road freight transport actors were used to facilitate the irregular entry of migrants into European countries have brought back the question of migration at the forefront of the industry’s concerns. As data indicate a rise in secondary movements throughout parts of Western Europe in 2023, logistics operators ought to be aware of this threat and the risks it carries.
By Jeanne Albin, LandRisk Security Specialist
The misuse of freight transport to facilitate the irregular entry of migrants to European countries is an issue that has been of major concern to the industry for many years. However, the recent implementation of rigorous controls on road travel, along with the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, resulted in major changes in modi operandi as smuggling networks were forced to adapt their operations. The past few years have thus seen reports and political discourses focus on the numerous crossings of the Mediterranean and English Channel by boat. However, other methods of transport—and, in particular, via boarding trucks—continue to pose a significant threat to logistics operators as recent statistics indicate a significant increase in secondary movements (i.e., between European countries) in 2023.
Irregular migration in Germany, for example, is on course to surpass a record high, with police data recalling 92,119 entries of irregular migrants between January and September 2023. This trend is likely to continue, and September 2023 marked the month with the highest number of entries since February 2016—at the height of the refugee crisis—, thereby prompting local authorities to establish temporary emergency controls at its borders with the Czech Republic, Switzerland and Poland. Similarly, French authorities recently indicated a 23% increase in entries from Switzerland in the first half of 2023 compared to the previous year—a phenomenon that led Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin to announce a collaboration between French and Swiss authorities to patrol the border in late October. The Alpes-Maritime department also reportedly recorded a 20% increase in crossing attempts through the Alps over the same period compared to the previous year, after migration flows from Sub-Saharan Africa—composed, in parts, of populations from countries with historical, political and cultural ties with France—to Italian shores grew throughout 2023.
Whilst reliable data regarding the modi operandi used by smuggling networks and individual migration enterprises alike on land is extremely limited, the evidence does show a rising trend of the misuse of legitimate truck transport to facilitate irregular entry. For example, our LandRisk Logistics System recorded its highest incidence of stowaway-related incidents to date in the South of France in 2023. Additionally, whilst the primary method used in attempts at crossing the English Channel remains the use of small boats, evidence indicates renewed tensions between migrants and companies operating within or close to local industrial estates in northern France, Belgium and the Netherlands—as perhaps best illustrated by the recent establishment of a business association in the Transmarck and Turquerie industrial estates in Calais to encourage stricter governmental responses following what local company owners described as an ‘unprecedented’ increase in incidents.
Unfortunately, a large number of these incidents have had tragic outcomes, including death, injuries, or degrading treatment of migrants. They also exposed operators to risks such as cargo degradation or seizure and, in some cases, penalties, as some countries recently chose to engage the responsibility of hauliers themselves when confronted with stowaway incidents. For example following the controversial revision of the Clandestine Entrant Civil Penalty Scheme by the British Home Office in February 2023, logistics companies now face heavy fines for being used to facilitate irregular entries or found operating vehicles deemed ‘not adequately secured’ by British officials during border crossings.
As smuggling networks have, times and times again, demonstrated their capability to quickly adapt to changes in law enforcement activities and migration patterns, it is thus imperative for legitimate actors in the road logistics sector to remain aware of this threat and the associated risks it carries.
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