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Wow. Oh my goodness. I cannot believe the size of this
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It's like if you're going on a bouncy castle. This is rubbish material. To think that people are paying thousands of pounds for this is really extraordinary
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The world is watching as Europe struggles to put a lid on its migration crisis
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This immigration is killing Europe. The sight of small boats carrying men, women and children onto European shores
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has dogged leaders across the continent. In the UK, our attention focuses on the Channel, where rickety dinghies make the perilous journey from Calais
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But the Channel is merely the final stop in a vast criminal enterprise that spans the whole of Europe
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I've come to the front line of the migration crisis to find the shocking secrets behind the people smugglers
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we're here at Capitan Andrevo which as you can see is really where Asia where the Middle East
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meets Europe it's right on the Turkish border with Bulgaria once you pass that checkpoint
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you have entry you have access for thousands of miles as far as Calais for example you're in the
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Schengen zone it's borderless so this really is the frontier into the criminal gangs and them
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starting to operate within the continent. Capitan Andreevo is watched over by the Bulgarian Customs Police
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and they've got their work cut out with over a million heavy lorries coming through here every year
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Captain Georgi Gospodanov leads the team's efforts here and wastes no time in showing me one of their extraordinary catches
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Oh my goodness, I cannot believe the size of this. So they've pumped up one of these inflatable boats for us
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to show us the sort of scale of it. It is massive, but I dread to think how many people are crammed in there
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It's like a sort of trampoline material. I mean, it's like bouncy castle
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It's like if you're going on a bouncy castle. This is rubbish material
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It is rubbish material. This is the cheapest material which can be used for this type of product You see the board for the engine How cheap is it it not even waterproof or whatever this boat in five six hours they already was maybe 70 60 percent from 70 on here this is this was
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inflated just 15 minutes ago so in two three hours it will be unusable on this really looking at the
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size of it you could get 10 people yeah and you'll say obviously because they're people smugglers
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So 60 would get on that? Yeah, yeah. They would try? This boat is created for not more than 10 people
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but they're trying to have 60, 80. Even on some of the bigger boats, up to 100 people
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Right. Yeah. And they're charging thousands of pounds for each person? Yeah
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That's the information we have. My goodness, I'm just going to have a little feel of that. I mean, that is extraordinary
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That's just your run-of-the-mill duct tape there. this rope is I mean to think that people are paying thousands of pounds for this
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is really extraordinary and these I read are often manufactured in Turkey
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in back streets for example definitely they are not manufactured in factories
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as you say it's back streets, basements and so on very low quality, very low material
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from May till now we have more than 457 guns. 457 guns
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Yeah, just for a few months, which indicates that the criminal groups are trying to be active
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What do we know about the gangs who are smuggling in guns or boats like this
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One thing is always true for the criminal gangs, and this is that they are trying to do a lot of money from illegal actions
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So what gives them a profit and a lot of money is important for them
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The people smuggling gangs operate on an international scale. Before their boats arrive on the UK's beaches
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they're made on the back streets of Turkey, propelled by Chinese-made engines
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But Europe is cracking down, capturing kingpins like Adam Savas, who was the National Crime Agency's most wanted man
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He was jailed for 11 years for smuggling equipment over the Turkish border which was used in half of all channel crossings in 2023 Gangsters like Savas have been running rings around the border force for years but now a key part of their strategy is being targeted Now at this crossing they seized
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280 boats, basically all like this. 80% are this size or very similar in size. Some are even bigger
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some are two metres larger in some ways. And if you think here, I mean, it hardly feels safe when
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I'm sitting here on land, the thought of having 100 people packed into this vessel doesn't really bear thinking about
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I think what's interesting is we are 1,500 miles away from that frontier that we all know when it comes to Calais and Dover
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And yet, really, this is where the battle starts. This is where the National Crime Agency, the authorities here in Bulgaria, are really having to crack down
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because it's not just the boats, it's the engines, it's the life jackets
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it's even drugs, it's even weapons, it's cash that is getting over the border
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And once they cross in from Turkey, they're free to go to the rest of Europe
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The Bulgarian Customs Police have X-ray machines on site and regularly check buses and lorries coming across this border
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But there are other methods that may surprise you. As part of the £1.2 million that the UK has invested into this border crossing point
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they've gained a new member of staff here. Adele was trained in the UK to sniff out the rubber on these illegal boats
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as well as the guns, drugs and cash usually found alongside them
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Always ready to work, Adele was more than happy to give me a demonstration
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Ah, frozen. Totally frozen, which I presume means that's where the substance is
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Well done. And it gets a bull to say well done. Adele will just stop when she has found something
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So what was that in that case? Marijuana. It was drugs, was it? Yeah, marijuana. Right
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Can I have a look in? Oh yeah So there is Right The team have just carried out a successful operation here called Balkan Bridge 2 Georgi took me through the startling seizures his team had made
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It was a very serious operation. We had more than 60 kilos of narcotics
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more than 20,000 fake textiles, more than 10,000 perfumes and a lot of other stuff, also undeclared cash
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But yeah, the main focus was the rubber boats and we were succeeded
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We had two rubber boats in a bus. They were declared as tents, but it was actually two rubber boats used for bringing migrants
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And our security services, MI5, talk about Russia in particular being behind some of these gangs
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both the state and also operatives within the Kremlin. Is that what you see
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This is something which I can confirm. But we are working very hard on these cases
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Progress is being made here on the Bulgarian-Turkish border, but this crisis is not going away
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and people are still making their way through this gateway to Europe illegally
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Leaving the border crossing and driving through Bulgaria, the political tension caused by the migrant crisis is palpable
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Just half an hour away from the border is the town of Harmanli, which is home to Bulgaria's biggest refugee camp
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where there have been riots. Now these paintings and murals go on for miles
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because the reality is behind those walls is the largest asylum and refugee camp in the whole of Bulgaria
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We're just a stone's throw from that crossing with Turkey. People have come from Syria, they've come from Afghanistan
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These are the people who made it over the border. But you look at those murals, contrast that with the barbed wire fence at the very top
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The reality is, when they do make it across, this is where they end up
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My time in Bulgaria revealed the sheer scale of the battle for Europe's borders
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a fight complicated further by the possibility that gangsters are now working hand in hand
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with nations hostile to the West. And if the tensions we're seeing across Europe over the migration crisis are to ease
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then the work of border force officials here on the hidden front line are essential
