Record number of NCA officers deployed to tackle people smugglers

The number of National Crime Agency officers tackling organised immigration crime has more than doubled since the start of 2025.

More National Crime Agency officers are being deployed to crack down on people smuggling than ever before, as the government restores order and control to UK borders. 

The Home Secretary, who visited the NCA’s headquarters in Stratford, has announced that there are now nearly 800 officers in post, up from 376 officers at the start of 2025. The dedicated NCA officers are backed by enhanced capabilities and by additional intelligence officers who play a strong role in increasing our ability to go after the smuggling gangs. 

This means hundreds more specialist officers are tracking down, detaining and bringing the criminal gangs behind small boat crossings and wider organised immigration crime to justice. 

These officers, working with international partners, have seized 1,109 small boats or engines since the election. Specialist officers assess that this is having a significant impact on smugglers’ boat and engine supply, making it more difficult and costlier for the gangs to source equipment.

Had this equipment made its way into the hands of the criminal smuggling gangs, it could have facilitated over 72,000 migrant crossings. 

The announcement comes as the Prime Minister visited the joint command room at Dover’s Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre to see the operation guarding the Channel at first hand.  

He met officers from the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, National Crime Agency and the Border Security Command, who all work side by side to track movements across the Dover Strait around the clock. The Prime Minister saw how surveillance drones capable of staying airborne for up to 16 hours are used to detect small boat activity and direct officers onto the gangs behind it. Just last year, the NCA was involved in almost 300 arrests to disrupt gangs bringing migrants to the UK illegally.