site.bta Inflatable Boats Apparently Intended to Carry Illegal Migrants Seized at Bulgaria's Border with Turkiye

Nine inflatable boats and three air pumps were impounded at the Kapitan Andreevo border checkpoint. It can be safely assumed that the boats were intended to carry illegal migrants from continental Europe via the English Channel to Britain, the Customs Office in Svilengrad said in a press release on Wednesday. The items, which were not declared to the Bulgarian authorities at the border with Turkiye, were seized after checks carried out by officers of the Customs Agency, the Border Police, the General Directorate Combating Organized Crime and the National Revenue Agency.

The need to fight organized crime groups that take migrants across the English Channel was brought up on November 13, 2023, by the then UK minister of state for immigration Robert Jenrick during a visit to Kapitan Andreevo. Back then, Jenrick and Bulgaria's Interior Minister Kalin Stoyanov signed a joint statement on enhanced cooperation to counter illegal migration.

The nine inflatable boats were detected on three separate occasions. In one of these cases, Bulgarian customs officers intercepted five such boats which, when inflated, would measure three by eight metres. They were in the trunk of a foreign-registered passenger car driven by a man holding Turkish and Swedish citizenship. In the other two cases, the inflatables and the pumps were detected in a goods-carrying van travelling from Turkiye to the Netherlands and in a bus.

During the period of enhanced control at Kapitan Andreevo, the Bulgarian authorities have returned to Turkiye two inflatable boats and six engines which were declared at the border but did not meet Bulgarian import requirements.