Around 340 police officers were deployed across at least five German states Wednesday morning in a raid against a migrant smuggling ring. Police arrested three Syrian and two Iraqi nationals, according to a press statement.
A total of 18 people between the ages of 23 and 57 are being investigated for gang-related and commercial smuggling. The other accused are ten Syrian nationals, one Iraqi national, and four Bulgarian nationals, accused of organizing and transporting migrants. Two of the suspects are believed to have handled an informal, anonymized cash transfer system—called “hawala banking”—for migrants to pay the smugglers.
The gang is believed to have illegally transported at least 140 people to Germany since December 2022. A trip from Slovakia to Germany cost around €700 euros, with another €500 charged for further transport to another EU country.
The people smuggling ring has international connections and is believed to have transported illegal immigrants on various smuggling routes from Croatia or Slovakia through the Czech Republic and sometimes further into neighboring European countries. A secret apartment in Jena, Thuringia, has housed the immigrants once they arrived in Germany. 15 of the 19 properties searched were in Thuringia, 10 of them in Jena.
The raid, which is part of a larger investigation, focused on retrieving evidence of criminal activity—cash, documents, and electronically stored material. It comes on the heels of a spate of knife crimes perpetrated by immigrants, including the murder of three people at a festival in Solingen two weeks ago.
