Tech companies ‘failing to prevent people-smugglers luring migrants to their deaths’, says UN

Exclusive: Social media giants 'enabling criminal activity' by traffickers who entrap victims who are unaware of dangers they face, according to UN migration agency

Tech companies are failing to crack down on people-smugglers using their platforms to lure migrants “to their deaths” with promise of safe passage to Europe, the UN has warned.

Companies such as Facebook and WhatsApp are “enabling criminal activity” by traffickers who entrap victims who are unaware of the dangers they face, according to the UN’s migration agency.

The warning comes amid a surge in migrants attempting to reach the UK by crossing the Channel in small boats, with almost 100 people intercepted by both British and French authorities while attempting to reach the UK from France since Christmas Day.

Home secretary Sajid Javid declared the crossings a “major incident”, and cut short a family holiday in order to take an urgent call with his French counterpart and hold talks with Border Force officials and the National Crime Agency on how best to tackle the issue.

Immigration minister Caroline Nokes revealed Mr Javid’s plan to take personal control of the situation as she visited Dover to speak with Border Force officials on Saturday.

The incidents have raised concerns that there could soon be fatalities such as those in the Mediterranean Sea, where more than 17,700 deaths have been recorded since the start of 2014.

Leonard Doyle, spokesperson for the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), said migrants were being “lured to Calais” over the internet as smugglers operate via social networks “without any real oversight” from the companies controlling them.

He said that while tech firms had taken measures to curb other exploitative activities such as child pornography, efforts to prevent people-smuggling has been “microscopic” compared with the damage it causes.

Charities on the ground in northern France meanwhile cautioned that irregular migration was not the result of social media but of the persecution faced by migrants in their home countries.

But they said failure by European governments to inform refugees of their right to seek asylum and how to do so had enabled criminal gangs to “fill the void”, often through online social networks.

Mr Doyle told The Independent: “People like to point fingers over the migration crisis, but a big part of it must be that the guy or the girl in the village with nothing but a cracked smartphone can actually meet a smuggler in a heartbeat.

“This person will often have no prior knowledge, no sense that this is a trap, no sense that this is going to end up in their prostitution, their slavery, their murder, their drowning.

“But the tech companies that have done so much to bring technology to its current place are not investing in civic communication to help counter-balance the nonsense people get from social media.

“If someone does a search right now anywhere in the world for child pornography, up immediately will come a flag saying this is illegal, don’t go any further, you’re committing an illegal act.

“But they won’t do that for migration. It’s our technology companies that are luring them to their deaths, and luring them to Calais. It’s not the companies that are doing it, but they’re enabling this criminal activity to happen, almost without any real oversight.”

Europol’s Migrant Smuggling Centre estimates that 90 per cent of migrants arriving in EU countries have had their journey facilitated by a criminal organisation, while the IOM says people-smuggling now represents the third-largest business for international criminals.

The IOM has been in ongoing talks with social media providers about its concerns over their role in the people-smuggling market, but Mr Doyle said that so far this had been to little effect.

“They claim they’re doing something, but they’re not. Why? Because they depend on shareholder value, so anything that interferes with that is affecting the stock price, which is already in trouble,” he said.

“Facebook has people working on this but it’s nothing compared with the impact. The amount of attention this gets compared with the damage it does is microscopic.”

Describing the process smugglers use to gain clients online, Mr Doyle said the first step were usually to “herd people like sheep” to a carefully protected WhatsApp group that tells them “when to move, what to do, what to say and how to deal with the authorities”.

He added: “If you wonder why 5,000 people just pop up in a French village, well, guess what – they got there through an encrypted WhatsApp group.”

Clare Moseley, founder of charity Care4Calais, disputed the focus on social media, saying: “It’s deeply upsetting to see people taking the risk of crossing the Channel. We never expected to see them resort to something so desperate.

“But this isn’t happening because of social media; it’s happening because they are being persecuted and killed and tortured in the places that they’re coming from.”

Josh Hallam, field manager for Calais-based charity Help Refugees, said smugglers were able to take control of the information flow because government bodies were not providing it.

“The reason so many people are risking their lives is because of the lack of state-funded information – knowledge of their asylum rights and so on – so they cannot make informed decisions,” he said.

“People are not coming because they think it will be an ‘opportunity’. People are fleeing army conscription in Eritrea, war in Syria and Afghanistan, all of the political issue in Ethiopia.

“But when the only access to information is from tiny NGOs like us – who are completely overwhelmed – other sources are no doubt filling that gap.”

A Facebook spokesperson said: “People smuggling is illegal and any ads, posts, pages or groups that co-ordinate this activity are not allowed on Facebook.

"We work closely with law enforcement agencies around the world including Europol to identify, remove and report this illegal activity, and we’re always improving the methods we use to identify content that breaks our policies, including doubling our safety and security team to over 30,000 people and investing in technology.”

A Home Office spokesperson said: “The recent increase in the number of migrants attempting to cross the Channel in small boats and enter the UK illegally is deeply concerning.

“We are providing resources to assist the French and are sharing intelligence so that we can crack down on the organised crime groups which are facilitating many of these crossings.

“The government is setting out plans for legislation to make social media safer in the forthcoming Online Harms White Paper.”