Fourteen Vietnamese stowaways have been recently caught trying to sneak into the UK on a lorry.
Eight of the men were discovered August 27 at the port of Calais in France during routine lorry inspections as the cargo truck were preparing to cross the English Channel to Dover.
UK Border Agency officers working at Calais noticed the lock on a Polish-registered lorry had been tampered with. A subsequent search revealed the Vietnamese men and one Iranian national hiding amongst a load of toothpaste heading for the UK town of Castleford in West Yorkshire.
On August 24, six other men were discovered on a lorry bound for Peterborough in the UK after a security dog detected their scent and alerted its handler. UK Border Agency officers then entered the Italian-registered cargo truckl and found the six men hiding inside a load of furniture.
In both cases, the stowaways were taken off the verhicle, fingerprinted, photographed, refused entry to the UK and then handed over to the French Frontier Police (Police Aux Frontier).
James Sharp, Asia Pacific Regional Director for the UK Border Agency said, “While the UK welcomes genuine visitors from Vietnam, we are also committed to tackling immigration abuse of all sorts, including people smuggling. Vietnamese attempting to enter the UK by clandestine means and those found to be facilitating the entry of illegal migrants, are acting illegally and they will be detained."
The UK Border Agency officers use hi-tech search equipment to combat immigration crime and detect banned and restricted goods that smugglers attempt to bring into the country.
Throughout 2009, more than 29,000 attempts to cross the Channel illegally were prevented.
