Members of people-smuggling gangs who send migrants across the English Channel in flimsy boats will face U.K. financial sanctions under measures announced Monday by the British government.
The U.K. said the new powers target smugglers and those who supply them with money and equipment. Foreign Secretary David Lammy said the measures are “the world’s first sanctions regime targeted at gangs involved in people smuggling and driving irregular migration, as well as their enablers.”
Those in breach of the rules can have U.K. assets seized, be barred from using British banks and be banned from entering Britain. The first sanctions under the new powers are due to be announced on Wednesday, the Foreign Office said.
The government said the new rules are authorized by existing sanctions legislation. British lawmakers won’t get a chance to debate them until they return from a summer break in September.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour Party government has pledged to stop criminal gangs sending thousands of migrants each year on perilous journeys across one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. Starmer has said the crime gangs are a threat to global security and should be treated like terror networks.
It’s unclear how effective the measures will be, since British authorities can only freeze assets that are in the United Kingdom, and most of the smugglers are based elsewhere.
Sanctions are one tool in an arsenal of measures that includes beefed-up U.K. border surveillance and increased law-enforcement cooperation with France and other countries.
So far the moves have had little impact. Some 37,000 people crossed the channel in 2024, and more than 22,000 so far in 2025 – an increase of about 50% from the same period last year. Dozens of people have died attempting the journey.
