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Migrant Crisis | Crooks’ new drug

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Thursday, October 1, 2015

A Mercedes and a BMW, both with British license plates, sit in a forest clearing on the edge of a small migrant camp in northern France. Everyone here speaks in whispers, or not at all. Bullet holes pock two shipping containers sheltering migrants, all trying to get to England, helping to explain the silence.
People smugglers who get rich off desperate migrants span the globe, and their tentacles extend into nooks and crannies like Teteghem, a small town outside Dunkirk. Here the smuggling kingpins are firmly in control, and growing nasty.
“Don’t come see me in the camp,” said a typically cautious Iranian migrant in the parking lot of a local grocery store, where talking is easier. “Problems,” he added, putting his finger to his head. “Bang!”
An Iraqi migrant was wounded by gunfire in mid-August, caught in the crossfire of score-settling among smugglers, said Teteghem Mayor Franck Dhersin. This month, police chased a Mercedes driven by a suspected smuggler into a ditch at the camp entrance, the shattered glass and skid marks visible a week later. An 18-year-old Syrian displayed his bandaged right leg and a hospital report stating that “metallic” objects were removed — police bullets according to migrants, metal from bullet-punctured containers hit by smugglers, says the mayor.
Few French know of the town of Teteghem, but some migrants first heard the name in a phone call before ever leaving their homeland. It is described by Mayor Dhersin and others as a drop-off point for a band of people smugglers taking in Syrians, Iraqis and Iranians; ultimately, officials believe, the gang is locked into a Britain-based network that may stretch to Kurdish regions of the Middle East.
The migrants are among thousands of desperate travelers who pass through northern France trying to sneak onto trucks, ferries or freight trains to Britain, where they hope to find a better life. Read More