General

What happened at the recent Organised Immigration Crime Summit?

By Amer Zaman

on May 14, 2025

Read Time: 7 Minutes

Unauthorised migration continues to be one of the “hot-button” issues in UK and global politics. One of the latest instalments in this ongoing debate was the holding of a landmark conference on organised immigration crime (OIC) in London.

The Organised Immigration Crime Summit was attended by representatives of more than 40 countries – including France, Iraq, Vietnam, and the USA – as well as social media giants such as Meta, X, and TikTok. The UK Government talked up the significance of the two-day summit at Lancaster House. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said to attendees: “There has never been a bigger gathering of people on this issue, building a truly international effort to defeat organised immigration crime.”

What was the Organised Immigration Crime Summit?

Held on 31^st March and 1^st April 2025, the Organised Immigration Crime Summit was reportedly the first major international summit specifically focused on tackling illegal migration.

The UK Home Office said the Organised Immigration Crime Summit differed from previous summits in that it “engaged both European nations and key source and transit countries, as well as those that are integral to the supply of equipment, including small boats and engines”. This approach, according to the department, ensured “a broader, more comprehensive approach to tackling OIC.”

8 highlights of the Organised Immigration Crime Summit

The conference brought forth a range of pledges and actions, including:

A communique was issued, declaring that the attending interior ministers stood “united in the fight against OIC, committed to protecting vulnerable migrants and bringing to justice the criminal facilitators.”
Emphasis in the communique was placed on “disrupting the OIC business model and its enablers”, and “sharing knowledge to strengthen our efforts”.
At the launch of the summit, Mr Starmer said that people smugglers had exploited “fragmented” policing, border force, and intelligence agencies to smuggle thousands of illegal migrants into the UK.
The UK Prime Minister said he was “angry” about the scale of illegal migration, describing it as “a massive driver of global insecurity” which undermined the UK’s efforts to control who entered the country.
UK Home Secretary Yvette Cooper announced that £30 million would be put towards operations to tackle global trafficking routes and the flows of illicit money funding them.
It was confirmed that an additional £3 million would be allocated to the UK’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to help expand its international work. This will be aimed at bolstering the CPS’s capacity to prosecute organised people smugglers, while growing its global footprint in support of the UK’s Border Security Command.
Representatives of social media organisations, meanwhile, were present at the summit to discuss how to combat the online promotion of people smuggling.
Gianluca Esposito, the Council of Europe’s Director General of Human Rights and Rule of Law (DGI), also addressed the conference. He reaffirmed the necessity of tackling migrant smuggling at the same time as protecting fundamental human rights.

What is Home Office immigration status?

The term “immigration status”, in the context of the Home Office, refers to the official permission that a non-UK national requires in order to live and/work in the UK.

UK immigration status – also sometimes referred to as “leave” or “leave to remain” – is granted by UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI), which is the division of the Home Office with responsibility for the country’s visa system.

There are various types of UK immigration status. The type that you have will dictate how long you can stay and what you are permitted to do in the UK – for example, whether you are entitled to work in the country or to access public funds.

Some of the main types of immigration status in the UK include:

Being the holder of a valid visa for the UK (such as the Skilled Worker visa)
Refugee status
Humanitarian protection
Indefinite leave to remain (ILR)
Discretionary leave.

How have key people and organisations reacted to the Organised Immigration Crime Summit?

A variety of prominent individuals and entities have responded to the events of the summit.

These include:

The refugee rights charity Safe Passage, which produced a “debunking” of four claims made by the UK Prime Minister at the summit.
The charity stated that current UK policies were “costing lives, not saving them”, and that the UK’s “strict and complex immigration rules” belied Mr Starmer’s suggestions that the country had been a “soft touch” on irregular migration.
Safe Passage added that the UK Government was “missing a key lever by refusing to open safe routes”.
The UK’s Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp, from the opposition Conservative Party, pointed to a spike in unauthorised small-boat crossings of the English Channel, stating that 2025 had so far been the “worst on record”.
Mr Philp directly attributed this situation to the Labour Government’s cancellation of the previous Conservative administration’s schemeto send asylum seekers arriving in the UK to Rwanda to have their claims processed there.
The Jewish organisation HIAS+JCORE, which provides a Jewish voice on refugee and asylum issues in the UK, noted Mr Starmer’s declaration that there was “nothing progressive or compassionate about turning a blind eye” to the misery caused by smuggling gangs.
The charity went on to observe, however, that such a “call for compassion” was absent from the summit discussions, which instead focused largely on “deterrence, enforcement, and arrests”.

HIAS+JCORE added that there was an urgent need for “this same international energy and cooperation to be invested into workable solutions, including safe routes.”

What happens to illegal immigrants in the UK?

An “illegal immigrant” to the UK can be defined as a non-UK national who comes to live and work in the UK despite not having the legal right to do so.

There are various circumstances in which a non-UK national will typically be considered an illegal immigrant in the country. These include if they:

Enter the UK without a UK visa or another form of valid permission
Stay in the UK beyond the date their previous UK visa expired, without having applied to extend that visa or switch to another visa
Stay in the UK beyond the date their previous UK visa expired, despite their application for a new visa (or to extend their existing visa) having been refused
Breach the conditions of their UK visa – for example, by working in the UK despite their visa not permitting them to do so.

If you are an overseas national who is in the UK despite not having the legal right to be in the country:

You run the risk of being deported
UK immigration officers have the right to detain you if you are found not to have valid UK immigration status, while the Home Office assesses your case
If you are removed from the UK, a re-entry ban may be imposed on you, depending on your circumstances.

The Illegal Migration Act became law under the previous, Rishi Sunak-led Conservative Government on 20^th July 2023.

According to a Home Office factsheet published at the time, “if you enter the UK illegally… you will be detained and promptly removed either to your home country or to a safe country where any asylum claim will be considered.”

The same publication went on to state that “you will no longer be able to frustrate removal attempts with late or spurious legal challenges or appeals, and once removed, you will have no right to re-entry, settlement, or citizenship.”

Illegal immigrants in the UK – sometimes referred to as “unauthorised” or “irregular” migrants – may have the option of claiming asylum or seeking discretionary leave to remain in the country on humanitarian grounds.

However, this will depend greatly on the given individual’s particular circumstances.

Seek immigration advice, guidance, and assistance from an award-winning UK firm

Here at Cranbrook Legal in central London, we realise it can be an overwhelming experience to deal with a situation in which your UK immigration status is uncertain.

If this describes your present circumstances, our award-winning experts in UK immigration law can provide tailored advice and guidance to help you determine the best route forward.

Unauthorised or irregular migrants in the UK may have various options, depending on their circumstances. However, we would urge you to first seek legal advice from a reputable immigration solicitor or qualified legal adviser catering to UK immigrants.

In what ways can our experts in UK immigration law help you?

The Cranbrook Legal team can examine your specific status. As a result of this, we can help make clear what the possibilities may be for you to stay in the UK legally.

You won’t be at risk of being reported to the Home Office simply because you asked for advice.

Moreover, if we determine together that you would like to apply for a particular UK visa or immigration status, we can assist you through this process, as part of our complete project-managed service.

To arrange a free consultation with us, please fill in and submit our online contact form today. You are also welcome to give our team a call, on 0208 215 0053.