A 29-year-old man has been arrested in north-west London after the discovery of a TikTok account advertising illegal crossings from the UK to Europe, the National Crime Agency has said.
The Afghan national was detained yesterday, 3 November, at an address in north-west London, where officers also seized a mobile phone. The arrest followed an NCA investigation into the advertising of illegal immigration services online.
Martin Matthews, senior investigating officer at the NCA, said tackling organised immigration crime remains a top priority for the agency, and that it is doing all it can to disrupt and dismantle the networks involved. The activity is believed to be in breach of Section 17 of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025.
The arrest sits within a much larger crackdown on people-smuggling adverts online. The NCA led a record year of takedowns during 2025, with almost 10,700 social media accounts, pages and posts linked to organised immigration crime removed in the 12 months to the end of December 2025. Its Online Communications Centre proactively scans social media, flagging material to platforms as potentially criminal.
The new Act, which became law in December and came into force in early 2026, makes it an offence to create material for publication online which promotes services facilitating a breach of UK immigration law — with people advertising illegal migration routes facing up to five years in prison. Unlike previous rules, officers no longer have to prove that an online advert directly led to a crossing before acting.
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