TOPSHOT - Migrants travel in an inflatable boat across the English Channel (Photo by BEN ... [+]
The U.K.'s National Crime Agency has said it's made big progress in stamping out accounts linked to people-smuggling on Meta, X, TikTok and YouTube.
Its referrals to the firms led to a 40% increase in the number of account takedowns last year, with more than 8,000 accounts, representing more than 90% of all referrals made, removed.
The figure was well up on the 5,600 removed in 2023, and means that more than 16,500 have been taken down in total since the NCA started working with four major social media companies just over three years ago.
Some of the posts removed falsely claimed that small boat crossings from France to the UK would take place via speedboat; others offered prizes to migrants who referred a friend. Some accounts offered transport from Africa to southern Europe, and others offered fake ID documents for sale.
"Social media remains a key way the organised crime groups involved in people smuggling promoting their illegal services to migrants. It is a major part of their business model," said Sophie Austin, operations manager at the NCA’s Online Communication Centre.
"Once migrants are engaged, they then move conversations onto encrypted messaging apps where they are hidden from law enforcement."
Since agreeing a social media action plan with the four companies in December 2021, the NCA has carried out a number of investigations targeting individuals or groups using social media to promote their people-smuggling services.
Among those convicted was Amanj Hasan Zada from Preston, jailed for 17 years in November 2024 after publishing video testimonials from those he’d successfully smuggled. Two other men, Dilshad Shamo and Ali Khdir from Caerphilly in South Wales, were convicted in November of using social media apps to publicize their people-smuggling enterprise. They are now awaiting sentence.
"Taking down these accounts disrupts the activities of those criminal networks, we are devoting more resources to doing that as it is one of a number of ways we can actively target them and make their life more difficult," said Austin.
"We continue to work closely with social media platforms to highlight such content and contribute to the development of detection capabilities."
Earlier this month, the U.K. government announced plans for travel bans, social media blackouts and restrictions on phone usage under tough new laws to dismantle people-smuggling networks.
And people smugglers are exploiting social media in the U.S. too. Last November, for example, two high ranking cartel members were sentenced to prison for their part in a major human smuggling operation.
"Cartel del Noreste, a Mexican cartel, is known for engaging in ruthless acts of violence and extortion to support its drug trafficking operations, and in recent years it has added human smuggling to its list of illicit money-making operations, with Facebook and social media becoming invaluable tools to facilitate its new venture," said U.S. Attorney Alamdar S. Hamdani.
"CDN uses these platforms to recruit, coordinate and expand its criminal operations, reaching broader audiences, while putting countless lives at risk. For years, Suarez and Guzman used Facebook to exploit and profit from vulnerable individuals while also evading detection, but thanks to the efforts of my office, those days are now over."
