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THE HEAD OF the Garda National Immigration Bureau (GNIB) has said he expects a ‘significant increase’ in the number of deportation orders in the coming months as a result of changes in how An Garda Síochána and the Department of Justice work.
Detective Chief Superintendent Aidan Minnock said gardaí will be freed up to carry out more practical work, which will see them carry out increased investigations into people who are already in the country illegally as well as more deportations.
In a rare interview Minnock told The Journal that he wanted to dispel myths that the Irish border is wide open to entry by illegal migrants.
He confirmed that the Irish border with Northern Ireland has been exploited by people traffickers and facilitators but said that his unit is working closely with the PSNI and British authorities to deal with that issue.
Justice Minister Helen McEntee claimed in an Oireachtas Committee meeting that 80% of people seeking asylum in the Republic are arriving here via the border with the North. Minnock said that his officers are dealing with a large amount of entries coming from across the land border.
Minnock has said that the exploitation of migrants is not specific to any one ethnic group, saying that some who travel here have paid tens of thousands of euros to organised criminals to get to Ireland.
He said these organised crime groups have so-called “facilitators” in Ireland and in other countries who are working on behalf of gangs elsewhere in the world.
Minnock said gardaí have deployed a special garda investigator to an airport in Spain to help prevent people being trafficked into Ireland by major organised crime gangs. The Madrid-based detective is part of a broader initiative of international links between An Garda Síochána and international partners working to deal with ongoing exploitation and trafficking of migrants.
Minnock said that the challenge for law enforcement was that the gangs are “agile and dynamic” and change their routine and tactics repeatedly. The way to fight that, he said, is to have good connections across the globe and for liaison gardaí both in Ireland and abroad constantly working with their international contacts.
They use systems such as Eurodac, which records the finger prints of all undocumented migrants and identifies when they first arrived in Europe.
Minnock stresses during the interview on a number of occasions that people coming into the country are fingerprinted and interviewed, contrary to the narrative spread by some anti-immigrant campaigners.
“The message I’d like to give to the public is to provide some assurance around the checks and balances that are in place in relation to people that are coming into the country undocumented.
“Those people are being interviewed at point of entry. We put them through an international protection process.
“Part of that process is a fingerprint process through the Eurodac system and from that point on, we have a record of every person who comes into this jurisdiction.
“If people don’t enter the international protection process, they’re removed from the country straight away.
“So the people who are in the country are put into Eurodac, and we do know who they are and their background,” he said.
Minnock said that his officers have found that some migrants are destroying their travel documents because they have been told to by those criminals. He said however that it is not the only way undocumented people are entering the country and described a scenario which has been uncovered in a joint Irish and Spanish operation in Barcelona.
Minnock said a holidaymaker who happened to be a Department of Justice employee waiting to board a flight observed a group of people waiting to board a flight to Dublin.
The employee saw a man with them to whom the group handed over generic travel documents before they boarded the flight. The policing theory is that the man was a trafficker or facilitator and that these documents will be used again, and were merely to get the group to the door of the plane.
The trafficker did not board the flight and left the departures area using an excuse.
The Irish law enforcement officer called Dublin which set in train a huge “multi-jurisdictional investigation” with the Spanish authorities arresting the gang member in Spain a few hours later.
The operation uncovered a criminal gang exploiting Somalis and attempting to get them Ireland.
Minnock said that there has been a dramatic increase in the organised trafficking of people across borders, pointing to the amount of money being made by the organised crime groups.
“Just like other areas of organised crime, they’re involved in technology, cyber, digital engineering - all different means to get people across the world,” he added.
One big initiative for GNIB, Minnock said, is Operation Sonnett which uses checkpoints to monitor the movement of people into the Republic of Ireland from Northern Ireland.
These checkpoints are carefully positioned given the past history of the North but he stressed that they are a normal part of policing and do not hinder people legitimately crossing the border.
Connections between Irish authorities and their British counterparts are key. A garda has been deployed to Belfast and a British immigration official has been sent to Dublin. Minnock said this is a critical factor in dealing with the issue. Both are based working in the operational management side of the missions.
“It gives us a real time intelligence capability and a way to act immediately,” Minnock explained.
He said that the traffickers had generally used buses and trains to transport people but shifted to taxis and car rentals as police operations targeted train and bus stations.
Minnock confirmed that many people arriving into Ireland are Palestinians with Jordanian passports, who are able to travel to the UK which has a visa-free travel arrangement with Jordan and then journey on to Ireland. There is also an issue with Bolivians coming in to Ireland through Belfast.
GNIB has significantly increased its number of ‘doorstep’ operations, which sees GNIB investigators and Department of Justice staff checking passenger documentation at the door of an aircraft as passengers arrive from places known to be key people-trafficking routes into the country.
“This year alone, there’s been a significant increase in relation to those checks, with 4,500 doorstop operations conducted in 2024,” he explained.
Minnock said there will be more Airport Liaison Officers deployed overseas in the near future as An Garda Síochána liaises with the Departments of Foreign Affairs and Justice to come up with the best location to send them.
The special garda investigator in Madrid has checked 42,492 passengers on 295 flights – of that he has detected 177 people who were denied travel to Ireland after the officer advised airlines that the person was travelling illegally.
As a result of the Madrid operation, Minnock explained, there has been a 33% increase in no-shows of suspected migrant passengers for flights on that route.
“We’re now working to expand the deployments across [airports in] Europe, and with the recent activity there in Barcelona and around Europe,” he said. “The system works.”
Minnock has said one key enabler for the GNIB will be moving away from stamping forms to completely focus on investigations. This will be achieved as the Department of Justice is taking over the registration of “non-nationals” across the country.
Until recently this was done by gardaí across the State in local immigration offices attached to garda stations.
That frees up gardaí, Minnock says, to carry out inspections of workplaces for the paperwork of foreign workers and also to carry out deportations and broader more detailed investigations.
“That would be a network of immigration officers right around the country assisting GNIB, which is coinciding with the fact that we expect a significant increase in the amount of deportation orders that are going to be issued by the Minister for Justice in the coming period. It will be a significant increase in capacity there by GNIB as a result of that,” he said.
He said that criminals who enter Ireland using aliases will come to the notice of gardaí due to the small size of the country. He cited the case of Peter Peter Dube, who was wanted in Zimbabwe for a double murder of his wife and the man she was in a relationship with. Dube was arrested and sent back to Zimbabwe in April.
“That’s certainly the minority of people, but we still have the means of finding those people and deporting them,” he said.
When asked directly about narratives by the far right and anti-migration activists that Ireland is not monitoring the flow of criminals, Minnock rubbished those claims.
“That’s just not the case. People who are coming into this jurisdiction are checked, are put on a system, are fingerprinted, and go through a process where we know who those people are, and if people subsequently shouldn’t be in the jurisdiction or don’t meet the requirements of international protection they are issued a deportation order, and some of those leave voluntarily, but they’re removed from the country,” he said.
On the flipside of that argument Minnock rejected any suggestion that the immigration system in Ireland is inhumane.
“There are significant checks and balances in place [from a legislative perspective] to make sure a person gets their entitlement and before a person is issued with a deportation order they have gone through the appeals system.
“If it has been decided, that they are in the country illegally, they are provided with the opportunity for a voluntary return, and only as a measure of last resort will a deportation order be issued,” he said.
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