Christopher Chope – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Christopher Chope on 2015-10-16.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many people are engaged in the Organised Immigration Crime Task Force; and in which countries those people are deployed.

James Brokenshire

The Organised Immigration Crime Taskforce brings together officers from the National Crime Agency, Border Force, Immigration Enforcement and the Crown Prosecution Service to pursue and disrupt organised immigration crime. The Taskforce builds on existing extensive law enforcement capability in the UK and overseas to tackle organised immigration crime and target criminal networks in source and transit countries. The Taskforce will exploit every opportunity to smash the gangs’ criminal operations. There are currently 52 officers in post. It is expected that 89 of the operational posts will be filled by the end of 2015 with all posts in place by the end of March 2016. In addition to posts in the UK, officers have been deployed to Europe and East, West and North Africa. While we continue to fill the additional posts we have temporarily flexed resources from across Organised Immigration Crime Taskforce partners to prioritise tackling people smuggling.