UK leader Starmer tells Interpol he will treat people-smuggling gangs like terrorists

LONDON — (AP) — Prime Minister Keir Starmer says he will double funding for Britain's border security agency and treat people-smuggling gangs like terror networks in an attempt to stop migrants crossing the English Channel in small boats.

In a speech Monday to a meeting of the international police organization Interpol, Starmer will say the gangs behind irregular migration are a serious threat to global security.

Arguing that “the world needs to wake up to the severity of this challenge,” Starmer will say that “we’re taking our approach to counterterrorism, which we know works, and applying it to the gangs,” according to extracts released by his office.

He’ll call for more cooperation between law-enforcement agencies, closer coordination with other countries and unspecified “enhanced” powers for law-enforcement.

Starmer plans to increase the U.K. Border Security Command’s two-year budget from 75 million pounds ($97 million) to 150 million pounds ($194 million). The money will be used to fund high-tech surveillance equipment and 100 specialist investigators.

Like previous Conservative British governments, Starmer’s Labour Party administration is struggling to stop thousands of people fleeing war and poverty from trying reach the U.K. from France in flimsy, overcrowded boats.

More than 31,000 migrants have made the perilous crossing of one of the world's busiest shipping lanes so far this year, more than in all of 2023, though fewer than in 2022. At least 56 people have perished in the attempts this year, according to French officials, making 2024 the deadliest since the number of channel crossings began surging in 2018.

Starmer leads a center-left government, and has raised some eyebrows in September when he visited Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni and praised her nationalist conservative government's "remarkable" progress in reducing the number of migrants reaching Italy's shores by boat.

Starmer will argue on Monday that “there’s nothing progressive about turning a blind eye as men, women and children die in the channel.”

The opposition Conservative Party argues that Starmer should not have scrapped the previous government's plan to send some asylum-seekers who reach Britain by boat on one-way trips to Rwanda. Supporters of the proposal say it would act as a deterrent. Human rights groups and many lawyers say it is unethical and unlawful to send migrants thousands of miles to a country they don't want to live in.

Starmer called the plan a “gimmick” and canceled it soon after he was elected in July. Britain paid Rwanda hundreds of millions of pounds for the plan under a deal signed by the two countries in 2022, without any deportations taking place.

Senior police and government officials from the 196 Interpol member states are attending the global police body's four-day congress in Glasgow, Scotland.

On Tuesday, Brazilian police official Valdecy Urquiza is expected to be named the new general secretary of the Lyon, France-based organization, replacing Jürgen Stock of Germany.

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