NCA seizes 25 boats built to ferry 1,700 migrants

The National Crime Agency and Border Force have seized 25 inflatable boats at a freight hub at East Midlands Airport. These vessels were capable of carrying up to 1,700 illegal immigrants across the Channel. Officers moved in on the craft before any of them could be put to use on the water.

The boats sat ready for the short hop that has become a daily pressure on the southern coast. Each one was built for the run that dumps people onto British beaches without leave to enter. The joint team from the National Crime Agency and Border Force cleared the lot from the airport freight site in one operation.

Sky News set out the bare facts of the seizure and the numbers involved. Twenty-five boats. Capacity for 1,700 illegal immigrants. East Midlands Airport as the holding point. No more and no less. The craft will not now make the crossing they were meant for.

This is the practical end of the trade in small boats. Inflatable hulls stacked at a Midlands freight hub, waiting for the next stage of the journey south and then over the water. The agencies took them out of circulation at the source point inside the United Kingdom rather than waiting for another flotilla to appear on the French side.

Every boat removed is one less platform for the next wave of illegal immigrants. The National Crime Agency and Border Force have shown they can reach the supply line at an airport freight shed and shut it down. The 25 vessels are gone. The 1,700 places they offered across the Channel are gone with them. That is the measure of the haul.

East Midlands Airport is not the coast, yet that is where the boats were found and taken. The operation stays on the record as a clean lift of equipment purpose-built for the Channel run. No speeches required. The numbers and the location say enough.