Criminal gangs are increasingly switching between drugs and people along smuggling routes to Europe, a senior police official at Europol’s anti-migrant smuggling task force has told The National.
The unit recently helped France and Spain after a two-year investigation to bust an Algerian criminal gang that made up to €24 million by smuggling migrants from Algeria.
“We are talking about polycriminal organisations,” said Alina Arucsandei, team leader at Europol’s European Centre Against Migrant Smuggling.
“We've had situations where, using the same infrastructure, criminal organisations moved irregular migrants into the EU and then on the reverse route moved drugs into African countries. It's a very clear reflection of the criminals' adaptability and constant reach for profits.”
Growing numbers
Migration has become a focal point in European politics. National leaders have toughened asylum rules and invested in combating undocumented arrivals. While arrivals have dropped by more than one third overall, dramatic events such as the mass arrivals in Ceuta last month have kept the focus on migration.
The Spanish government is under intense pressure from other European capitals to not allow the few thousand migrants, largely unaccompanied minors, that stayed in Ceuta to travel to mainland Spain to request asylum.
Europol, which is based in The Hague in the Netherlands, plays a key role in supporting cross-border investigations with pan-European databases, allowing states to establish connections such as identifying suspects common to a number of countries.
A new task force dedicated to better counter people smuggling in the Western Mediterranean was set up in early 2026 and is being coordinated within Ms Arucsandei's department. Its goal is to tackle high-value targets.
“We are trying to look into the most prominent criminal organisations that national authorities have identified and prioritised, and we are trying to take down those actors that really make a difference, so that the impact of our work together is more visible in on the ground,” Ms Arucsandei said.
In the recent Spanish-led investigation into a criminal gang operating on the Algeria-Spain route, French and Portuguese investigators were sent to Spain in joint action together with Europol staff and forensics experts. A total of 78 people were arrested, Europol said. The suspects, mostly of Algerian origin, had connections to criminal groups in France, Belgium, Portugal, Italy and Poland.
Migrant departures from Algeria to Spain are relatively new and growing in number, the International Organisation for Migration's most recent report shows. In 2025, departures shifted away from Morocco to Algeria, part of which lies only 23km from Spanish territory. A possible reason for the change was intensified Moroccan maritime patrols.
The Western Mediterranean route is predominantly used by Algerians, who represent nearly half of arrivals, followed by Moroccans aiming to settle in Spain, or travel onwards to France, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands.
In the first six months of 2025, the IOM recorded 5,647 arrivals on the Spanish mainland and the Balearic Islands via this route – a 66 per cent increase compared to the same period the previous year. Most migrants surveyed by IOM said they had been driven by economic hardship.
Their numbers remain lower than those of the central Mediterranean route, through which arrivals to Italy and Malta decreased by 46 per cent in the first six months of this year. to 8,577.
Luxury route
The Algeria-Spain route may be becoming increasingly attractive for smugglers because it is lucrative. Migrants pay €8,000 and €12,000 each to be transported by speedboat to Spain in a matter of hours.
“It's considered a sort of luxury service,” Ms Arucsandei said. “They have two, three engines, sometimes very expensive, very powerful engines, that make the journey very fast.”
Known as narcolanchas, they can travel up to 100kph and are also used to transport cannabis from Morocco to Spain. But conditions are dangerous, with up to 70 people packed on to an eight-metre boat at times. At least 150 people died or disappeared in the first six months of 2025 on this route.
On the way back to Algeria, narcolanchas carry drugs from Europe, largely synthetic substances such as MDMA made domestically, or cocaine from South America that has come through European ports. Ms Arucsandei described them as “the type of drugs that are not available on demand in at least Northern Africa”. About 15,000 MDMA pills (7kg), 61kg of hashish, and 500 grams of cocaine were seized in the Europol-supported arrests in August.
This is only one indication of criminal networks becoming increasingly professional. “They are digitalising many steps of the of the smuggling operations,” Ms Arucsandei said. “We're talking about different criminal cells located in various countries, inside and outside of the EU, who work together on a very business-orientated model, using each other's resources, using each other's capabilities to make sure that the journey is profitable ultimately for them.”
