A convicted
foreign drug smuggler was stopped trying to enter the country
after the UK Border Agency's hi-tech e-borders monitoring
system flagged his impending arrival on a Gatwick bound flight.
The UK Border Agency refused entry to the 40-year-old Lithuanian
national on arrival from Vilnius because he was deported in April
2002 having been convicted in 1998 of attempting to smuggle
cocaine into the UK.
The e-Borders system, which electronically checks passenger data
before they set foot on a plane, matched the passenger against
watchlists which revealed his earlier conviction and deportation.
The e-Borders centre control room provided details of the
passenger to UK Border Agency officers at Gatwick's south
terminal to enable them to intercept the passenger on Saturday
afternoon (6 March).
Nick Crouch, UK Border Agency Assistant Director at Gatwick
Airport, said:
"The fact that UK Border Agency officers were able to
identify and target a convicted drug smuggler before he landed at
Gatwick airport clearly demonstrates the value of e-borders.
"It means we can count people in and out of the UK and
capture known criminals, terror suspects and illegal migrants
while gathering evidence against smugglers and people traffickers.
"e-Borders has already had a huge impact, helping us
catch more than 5,400 criminals including rapists and murderers."
The National Border Targeting Centre (NBTC) receives information
on passengers and crew and, over time, will check an estimated 250
million passenger movements per year. The centre was formally
opened today (11 March) by the Home Secretary. The NBTC will also
process visa application data for overseas posts by checking the
applicant and sponsor details against watch-lists.
These watch-list checks are just one part of the triple ring of
security that protects Britain, alongside fingerprint checks when
people apply for visas and ID cards locking foreign nationals to
one identity.
NOTES TO EDITORS
1. The UK Border Agency was launched on 3 April 2008, bringing in
a single force to protect our borders, control migration for the
benefit of the country, prevent border tax fraud, smuggling and
immigration crime and make quick and fair decisions on asylum claims.
2. e-Borders was launched by the UK Border Agency in May 2009,
following the successful trial of Project Semaphore.
3. Since the e-Borders programme was launched in May 2009 it has
had considerable success - leading to the identification of people
smugglers, the confiscation of fraudulently used British passports
and the seizure of millions of pounds worth of drugs and tobacco.
Since May there have been over 70,000 alerts.
4. e-Borders requires carriers and owner/operators of all vessels
(air, sea and rail) due to arrive in or depart from the UK to
electronically submit detailed passenger and crew data to the
e-Borders system prior to travel.
5. Carriers on high risk routes can be required to provide
reservation data, known as Other Passenger Information (OPI), to
the e-Borders system, but only if it has been collected in the
normal course of their business.
6. The carrier collects the data held within a passport or other
travel document. This is sent to the operations centre of the
e-Borders system where it is run against a number of watchlists.
7. e-Borders is just one of the steps the UK Border Agency has
introduced to target criminals. Others include:
* a freight targeting system that provides real-time risk
assessment and powerful new scanners to detect smuggled goods at
port;
* providing detection technology and training to
other countries, including to the special fraud unit of
Nigeria's Police Force - assisting it in tracking down
the manufacturers and suppliers of fraudulent documents;
* UKBA officers stationed around the world stopping 42,000
inadequately documented passengers from boarding flights bound for
the UK last year;
* between April and September 2009 teams identifying 350
potential victims of trafficking including 104 children; and
* seizing £343 million worth of illicit drugs, 5,800
dangerous weapons and 3,165,849 items of counterfeit and pirated
goods between April 2008 and March 2009.
Contacts:
NDS Enquiries
Phone: For enquiries please contact the above department
ndsenquiries@coi.gsi.gov.uk