Individuals and entities sanctioned include a small boat supplier in Asia and gang leaders based in North Africa.
The United Kingdom has sanctioned 25 targets involved in alleged people smuggling, under a new financial sanctions regime targeting those facilitating the travel of refugees and migrants across the English Channel via small boats.
The individuals and entities targeted on Wednesday include a small boat supplier in Asia and gang leaders based in the Balkans and North Africa. “Middlemen” putting cash through the hawala money transfer system in the Middle East, which is used in payments linked to Channel crossings, are also targeted.
It is unclear how effective the new sanctions regime will be, since British authorities can only freeze assets that are in the UK, and most of the smugglers are based elsewhere.
Foreign Secretary David Lammy said on Wednesday that it was a “landmark moment in the government’s work to tackle organised immigration crime [and] reduce irregular migration to the UK”.
“From Europe to Asia, we are taking the fight to the people smugglers who enable irregular migration, targeting them wherever they are in the world and making them pay for their actions,” he added.
The move follows legislation being introduced under the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill to ramp up enforcement powers for police forces and partners to investigate and prosecute people smugglers.
As part of the new sanctions regime, which was introduced two days ago, the government can now freeze assets, impose travel bans and block access to the country’s financial system for individuals and entities involved in enabling irregular migration, without relying on criminal or counterterrorism laws.
Albanian Bledar Lala, leader of the Belgian operations of an organised smuggling group, and a company in China that advertised small boats for people smuggling on an online marketplace are among those sanctioned.
The number of refugees and migrants arriving on England’s southern coast via small boats from northern France is a major political issue for Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour government, which has seen the far-right Reform UK party make significant political gains with a hardline anti-immigration platform.
Starmer recently agreed to migration deals with France and Germany.
Earlier this month, Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron agreed to a “one in, one out” deal in which refugees and migrants arriving by small boats would be returned to France in exchange for an equal number of migrants being able to come to the UK from France via a new legal route, which would be fully documented and subject to strict security checks.
Last week, Germany and the UK signed a historic defence treaty, in which Berlin committed to making facilitating the smuggling of refugees and migrants to the UK a criminal offence. The law change, which is expected to be passed by the end of the year, will give German authorities more powers to investigate and take action against warehouses and storage facilities used by smugglers to conceal small boats for Channel crossings.
Some 37,000 people crossed the English Channel in 2024, and more than 22,000 so far in 2025 – an increase of about 50 percent from the same period last year. Dozens of people have died attempting the journey.