The new TikTok tactic to lure migrants onto mega dinghies

Criminal gangs are using “coded language” in TikTok adverts for small boat crossings to avoid them being taken down – as smugglers lure migrants to ever dangerous routes on mega dinghies carrying hundreds at a time. AI images of lions; emojis of “ninjas”, Union Flags or boats and planes; and slang words or phrases are being used to attract people attempting to cross the English Channel, without smugglers’ online accounts being shut down and investigated by police. The role of social media videos in luring those desperate enough to attempt the dangerous crossing, with a leading National Crime Agency (NCA) investigator saying it plays a part “for almost all migrants arriving” in Britain. Shorts In one advert, found by The i Paper, a suspected Albanian smuggler stands next to a scenic lake wearing a balaclava, with three child-sized dinghies behind him and Albanian rap blasting. “Are you bored with this life? Grab a boat and get out on the sea,” he tells those watching. His account was deleted after it was flagged to TikTok. In the first half of the year, TikTok removed 17,000 posts and accounts for advertising crossings – at least 10,000 of which originated within the UK. However, the ads remain prolific, as smugglers encourage more and more people to come to Britain on mega dinghies that can carry up to 230 people across at one time. At least 11 such crossings have taken place this year, according to the French authorities. One anti-migrant clash in Portsmouth last weekend followed the interception of a boat carrying 140 people, with those on board taken ashore. Smugglers frustrated by a fall in the number of crossings have started to utilise ‘mega boats’ that can carry more than 200 people (Photo: SNMS Berck sur Mer/AFP) The Government’s clampdown on illegal crossings is starting to work. About 33,000 people arrived on small boats in the year to June 2026, a drop of 23 per cent on the previous year, Home Office figures show. However, authorities say the need to tackle both the boats and the online adverts luring migrants to the French coast is clear. Anna Turley, minister for border security and asylum, told The i Paper: “Videos encouraging people to make dangerous Channel crossings show the evil tactics used by smuggling gangs to line their own pockets. “Disrupting the criminal business models used by these gangs means cutting off their operations on all fronts, targeting both their online advertising as well as the illegal crossings that their videos promote.” The i Paper obtained exclusive access to TikTok’s safety team, the people attempting to stem the flow of videos advertising small boat crossings. “[These smugglers] are not fools. These are criminal actors,” said Valiant Richey, TikTok’s safety lead. “They are using coded language and subtle references because they know that we’re trying to remove that content. It’s this game of cat and mouse where they’re trying to avoid our systems, but we are using the information that we get from our partners, such as the NCA, or from our own investigations, and putting those breadcrumbs together to find these networks and then remove them.” TikTok alone claims 100 million videos are uploaded by users every day and it has a billion users logged into its app. Using a mixture of technology – including AI – as well as human moderators, Richey said 180 million videos were removed for violations of community guidelines between January and the end of March. These could include anything from self-harm content to scams to physical abuse, and 99 per cent were removed before any user reported them. Three million videos showed people being trafficked or smuggled, with 98 per cent of these being taken down before being reported. ‘Route to England by dinghy‘ While online safety teams fight to clamp down on these videos, new ones appear just as quickly across social media apps. In one hour, The i Paper found dozens of examples of people filming themselves on small boats or advertising routes, many from Albania or crossing Europe from war-torn Sudan. Platforms are facing calls to do more to proactively stop showing harmful content. The Albanian smuggler telling people to “get out on the sea” offers this opportunity at the price of “30,000 lek” (£275), around a third of the average monthly salary in his home coutry. Another video on the same smuggler’s TikTok page, all of which are similar, is posted alongside a less subtle message: “Route to England by dinghy.” Some accounts found by The i Paper appear to show an Albanian gang using children’s boats to catch potential migrants’ attention. Other accounts seem to show migrants en route, but these people may be acting on behalf of smugglers (Photo: TikTok) There is awareness of the potential for the videos to be reported. Under one post, showing a Sudanese man making his way to the UK in a small boat, a person comments: “Don’t upload these things on TikTok… it will end up on the BBC”. Others suggest smugglers are banning migrants from recording videos while crossing. “Thank God you’re safe, but they said not to film while you’re out at sea because it’s against the rules. Don’t film while you’re out at sea…”, one person comments, while another warns: “Don’t upload videos like this.” TikTok removed the footage flagged by The i Paper and banned an apparent smuggler account. Criminals also “routinely” use the trafficked person to help them reach friendship or family circles – either via the person directly or by taking over their social media – in order to find their next payday, according to Neil Giles, intelligence ambassador for charity Stop the Traffik. They spin false tales of a “big money tree” to tempt people into making the crossing, and then exploit them into advertising the routes online to help make the smugglers more money. Accounts found by The i Paper were often surfaced via comments left under migrants’ videos. ‘Pull them out by the roots‘ Richey – a former prosecutor in the US who specialised in exploitation, sexual violence, and human trafficking – said smugglers needed apps such as TikTok to keep their businesses going – which mde it harder and more important to disrupt them. “They need a marketplace. You don’t make money unless you get customers, and so they are going to any platform where they can find people because it’s a volume game for them,” he added. Once smugglers find their marks on the platform, they take the conversation to private messaging apps like Telegram or Whatsapp to finalise the transaction – a trend the NCA corroborated. TikTok’s internal analysis found that when a smuggler account is removed and a new profile pops up in its place, the new profile now achieves only around 3 per cent of the original reach before the re-registered account is taken down. TikTok’s investigators map networks of accounts linked to criminal gangs as part of their work removing smuggler content from their platform. (Photo Illustration: Lucie Wimetz/the i Paper/TikTok) By using a wealth of backend data, the team at TikTok create complex maps of profiles that do not appear to be publicly linked. “You have to go in and pull them out by the roots. That means identifying those networks, understanding their links to each other, and eliminating all of them,” Richey said. Both Meta – which owns Facebook and WhatsApp – and Telegram said content relating to human exploitation or trafficking is forbidden on their platforms. They said they took a zero-tolerance approach towards it, including the removal of content, via proactive monitoring, and encouraging reports from users. Criminals ‘exploiting’ social media Mike Hulett leads the NCA’s Threat Leadership team monitoring online organised immigration crime. The NCA helped to remove around 5,600 posts and accounts from TikTok between January and the end of July this year. It also played a role in taking down 2,747 from Facebook and Instagram, and 3,194 from Telegram. The crime agency is on track to remove more content this year than last year, when about 10,700 posts, pages and accounts were discovered by its officers and removed. Around 40,000 accounts, posts or pages have been removed since the NCA started working with social media companies towards the end of 2021. “We are very concerned about how social platforms are being exploited by criminals,” Hulett said. A woman with a child turns back to the beach at Gravelines in France after failing to board a dinghy. Two migrants died trying to cross that day, in April this year (Photo: Tom Nicholson/Getty) “We’ve gone from small boat crossings being few and far between in around 2018, to from 2021 onwards, an organised criminal business model. “Our strategy is to try and break that model, to make it harder for the criminals to get the equipment, get in touch with the potential migrants and arrange the crossings.” The number of officers tackling organised immigration crime has more than doubled since the start of 2025, reaching almost 800 staff. The NCA reports that arrests related to people smuggling rose by 55 per cent in the last year. While social media companies such as Tiktok “do a huge amount in the background” to detect and take down smuggler content, Hulett’s team focuses on posts “that effectively have slipped through their net”, while working with platforms to help “make their net as tight as possible”. He said: “We can’t pretend no material is going to be published and nothing’s going to get through. We have to work to make that as minimal as possible.”