People traffickers are posting promotional videos featuring innocent young British women flirting to entice male migrants to come to Britain, a Daily Mail investigation has found.
The clips of women posted without their consent are being used by criminal gangs to advertise their services, providing irregular migration routes to the UK and Europe, it’s believed.
A network of accounts across social media websites TikTok and Instagram, with tens of thousands of followers between them, have shared similar footage.
Videos stamped with a Union Jack emoji show young girls in semi-revealing clothing, like low-cut tops or shorts, in situations where they are typically joking around in the street or outside pubs or clubs around the UK.
The young women featured laugh, pose or dance for the camera in a mildly flirtatious way, apparently completely unaware of how the footage will later be framed and shared to thousands of mostly male strangers.
The accounts posting such footage are believed to be fronts for criminal people smuggling gangs looking to sign up new business, principally from North Africa and the Middle East.
One TikTok user regularly posting such content is overt about being able to arrange illegal entry into the UK – believed to involve crossing the Channel by small boats.
In that poster’s profile bio is a mobile phone number with the caption ‘contact for Schengen visa’ – purporting to be able to informally provide the short-stay permit for European travel, with overstays a common means of illegal migration into the UK from continental Europe.
The user – who appears to be from the Gujjar ethnic community found in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan but now based in the UK – has repeatedly posted clips stamped with a British flag of dressed-up women walking through UK city centres.
Footage of young women partying, dancing and drinking at night-time appears constantly throughout their feed – as they use such imagery to promote the attractions of the lifestyle here.
One clip shows the man walk past what appear to be two hen party groups having fun on a busy city centre street.
Another shows him standing laughing with an attractive young blonde woman he has apparently just met, along with a blushing emoji and the caption: ‘Benefits of study.’
A second similar clip, accompanied by the same caption, shows him joking with three young British girls, all wearing tight tops and trousers, who he appears to have approached while they are on a night out.
The women, who seem in high spirits after drinking, share an unsuspecting hug with him before moving on – but the video he later posted of this brief exchange is disturbingly captioned with laughing emojis and the words: ‘Emigrate on a study visa.’
Referring to the social media pages set up by people smugglers featuring young British women to entice asylum seekers to the UK and linking them to sex offences carried out by migrants, Sarah Vine wrote on Tuesday in the Mail: ‘These sex attacks are all part of the same pattern.
‘They come from a clash of values and from an inherent weakness on the part of Western liberal democracies in the face of behaviour which can only be described as predatory and barbaric.
‘They are taking us for fools. And if you don’t believe me, just look at social media: it’s full of male migrants boasting that they can come here and have their pick not only of all the economic benefits this country has to offer but also avail themselves of our girls and women. Is it any wonder they are showing up in their droves?’
And she’s right. These are just some of the multiple profiles the Daily Mail has uncovered sharing such content – though many are less explicit about what they are touting and are thought to rely on direct messaging to sign up new businesses.
But many share common use of the word ‘haraga’ in their username, a north African Arabic slang term for irregular migrants coming from the territory to Europe.
The term is thought to derive from a word that literally refers to burning, referencing incomers who might burn their identity papers upon arrival to make it harder to deport them when they arrive in Britain without legitimate asylum claims.
Many of the videos specifically frame the women they feature as being from the UK.
One video, accompanied by British flag, heart and queen emojis, shows a woman in a crop top and shorts being handed a rose and a handwritten note in a London park.
Another clip from the same profile shows a man jokingly proposing to two women one evening in London’s Leicester Square and wrapping his arms around them as he goes down on bended knee in a parody of a marriage proposal.
The same user has also previously posted clips flaunting his supposed wealth by filming wads of Euros wrapped in elastic bands in a mini fridge or running tens of thousand of Euros in cash through a money counter – seemingly also to entice others to join him in moving to Europe.
The findings of our investigation – which appear to show young men effectively being told that moving to the UK can help them satisfy their sexual urges – are particularly disturbing this week.
That is because the country is reeling in shock at the horrific case of a 15-year-old British schoolgirl who was dragged into a park to be raped by two Afghan asylum seekers.
Disturbing details of the victim’s ordeal were revealed in court as Jan Jahanzeb and Israr Niazal, both 17, were jailed for the attack in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire.
The two defendants had arrived in Britain in small boats just months before targeting the child in a park on May 10 this year.
Phone footage captured by the victim was so appalling that one of the boy’s own barristers warned it would lead to ‘disorder’ if ‘the general public were exposed’ to it.
In the distressing three-minute clip, the girl could be heard crying, ‘you’re going to rape me’, as she was led away from where she had been drinking with friends and taken to a secluded ‘den-type’ area in nearby parkland.
The footage, played at Warwick Crown Court this week, also showed her weeping, screaming ‘help me, someone help me’ and begging not to be taken by the pair.
She was forced to perform a sex act on the boys in a secluded area, before she escaped and filmed more clips describing her ordeal.
At one point in the initial three-minute clip, a woman can be heard stopping and asking in urgent tones if the girl is alright.
The girl cries that she is not alright, before yelling ‘help!’ repeatedly.
Yet, for reasons that remain unclear, there was no further effort by the witness to intervene.
Police are understood to have failed to track down the female passerby so have been unable to establish why she apparently abandoned her efforts to rescue the girl.
In an impact statement read to Warwick Crown Court at the attackers’ sentencing, the victim said: ‘The day I was raped changed me as a person. I’m no longer a happy, carefree teenager. This was my first sexual experience.
‘When I go out, I no longer feel safe, so much so that I have started to avoid it altogether. This has also impacted my education and school life at the worst possible time as I’m taking my GCSEs.
‘I hate that I’m now looked at as a victim, even though that is exactly what I am.’
Ahead of jailing Jahanzeb for ten years and eight months, and Niazal for nine years and ten months, Judge Sylvia de Bertodano also accepted a legal challenge mounted by the Daily Mail which meant they could be named for the first time.
The judge said the pair had ‘betrayed the interests’ of genuine refugees and ‘should feel a deep and lasting sense of shame’.
She added: ‘No child should have to suffer the ordeal [the victim] has suffered. The fact is, you two have robbed her of her childhood.’
The shocking array of crime committed by migrants living in taxpayer-funded hotels was exposed by the Mail earlier this year.
Rape, murder and assault are among the offences at least 300 asylum seekers have been charged with in just three years as of August – as well as arson, robbery, dangerous driving, fraud, possessing indecent images of children and supplying drugs.
However, the true toll of migrant crime blighting neighbourhoods across Britain may be higher, given our investigation only looked at around 65 hotels known to have accommodated migrants as part of a £3billion Government scheme.
Our analysis of court records revealed assault (69) was the most common crime migrants were accused of, followed by theft (54).
Drug-related offences (45), sexual assault (35) and weapon-related crimes, such as possession of a knife (31) rounded out the top five.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp called the revelations ‘shocking’ and said they exposed ‘the risk posed by these illegal immigrants to the British public’.
