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UK turns up heat on illegal aliens
Page 11
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• The Home Office has pledged to catch and punish more lorry drivers and transport companies involved in the smuggling of illegal immigrants by using detector dogs and heat-seeking sensors.
The warning comes with the launch of a unit to target criminals who help illegal entry to the UK, combining the Immigration Service and the Criminal Intelligence Service.
Mike O'Brien, immigration minister at the Home Office, says: "Increasingly we will be catching the lorry drivers who smuggle these people in. There will be more lorry drivers, no doubt, finding their way into prison. The message will even tually get through and the illegals will find some other method to get through controls and we'll have to make sure that we're as hard as we can be on them. They may get away with it once but the chances are increasing that they will get caught next time."
Although it is unclear what action will be taken against hauliers who unwittingly bring immigrants into the UK, O'Brienwarns that courts are cooperating in handing out tough sentences from four to six years.
Illegal immigration is big business, estimated to be worth C5.4bn worldwide.
• See our illegal immigrants feature in CM 1-7 January 1998.