Albanian traffickers post TikTok advert boasting ‘100,000% secure’ Channel crossings

The Government is bracing for another surge of migrant boats crossing the Channel in the next week, the Mail can reveal today.

A revealing advert put up on TikTok by Albanian traffickers is telling migrants from the small Balkan country to be ready for safe sea journeys from France to England tomorrow.

To a background of blaring rock music, the overlaid wording on the video says: ‘Our next crossing. 100,000% secure. Date 25.11.2022’. It shows a picture of waving Albanians on a rubber boat and in the background a Border Force vessel on duty in the Channel.

Meanwhile, the overcrowding at Manston migrants’ processing camp in Kent, which was emptied of people earlier this week after a spate of infections and criticism over bad hygiene from campaigners, is back in business after an intensive deep-clean.

It is now ready for the fresh arrivals at Dover. New housing marquees have been erected on the former RAF site. Border Force and immigration staff, including security guards, were told to turn up for normal duty from 7am this morning.

‘In the last few days we have had nothing to do as the camp had been cleared of thousands of migrants and sent to hotels,’ a Manston security guard told the Mail. ‘We were kicking our heels. Now we are back in business because the traffickers have not clearly not given up.

‘We have been told there are windows of good weather with no wind this weekend which will allow crossings. Next week, as the conditions in the Channel improve, we expect the boat arrivals to climb further.’

The alert over crossings comes as a secretive and heavily guarded deportation flight from the UK taking 11 Albanians home took place on Wednesday morning, the Home Office has confirmed.

The deportees are believed to have included illegal boat arrivals previously detained at Manston, and criminals living in the UK who have been convicted here, in the EU, or in Albania.

Flight tracking sites show the deportation flight, on a Home Office chartered Titan airways plane, left London’s Stansted airport at 7.56am on Wednesday and landed in the Albanian capital of Tirana at 10.17am British time. It was not listed as a departure at Stansted, but was shown as an arriving aircraft in Albania.

Sources in Tirana said: ‘The flight was five minutes’ late although it set off on time. The 11 who returned were taken from the plane to a special police station, paid for by the UK, on the airport site. Their passports were stamped by Albanian immigration officials which means they cannot return into the Schengen zone of Europe for three years.’

Home Secretary Suella Braverman told the House of Commons on Wednesday that 36 Albanian boat migrants who arrived on the Kent coast and were then detained at Manston processing centre have been deported on several flights.

However, Mrs Braverman did not include the Wednesday morning flight, which landed in Tirana before she spoke in Parliament. It was only after the Mail discovered the deportation had taken place that the Home Office confirmed it.

Now more returns of Albanian boat migrants by the Home Office are expected. An Albanian border official said: ‘The British are keen to show they are escalating these returns efficiently and quickly. We are ready to co-operate with them.’