A fisherman just admitted smuggling migrants across the Channel on a yacht
27 October 2026 · 27 October 2026Share
A U.S. Customs and Border Protection A-Star helicopter and SAFE Boat interdicted a recreational vessel carrying undocumented migrants off San Diego. File photo. U.S. Customs and Border Protection · Public domain
A fisherman has just pleaded guilty to smuggling Albanian migrants across the Channel on a yacht.
Eno Gajda is 58. He's Albanian.
He entered his plea at Bournemouth Crown Court a day ago.
He'll be sentenced at the same court next month.
So what did he actually do?
Two months ago, Eno Gajda sailed a 40ft yacht from Dielette, in France. He was heading for Portland, in Dorset.
On board were sixteen Albanian men. And one boy.
Think about that for a second. Not a dinghy. A fishing boat. Steered across one of the busiest shipping lanes on the planet. With a child on it.
Border Security Command officers tracked that yacht the whole way across the Channel.
They intercepted it. And they escorted it into Portland Marina.
Everyone on board was then handed to immigration authorities.
Eno Gajda pleaded guilty to facilitating illegal immigration.
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Port de Diélette is shared between the communes of Flamanville and Tréauville in Normandy. File photo. Olivier Dugornay · CC BY 4.0
Andy Tickner is the National Crime Agency's branch commander on this case. He says quote "This was a brazen attempt to smuggle a group of vulnerable migrants".
So that's the NCA's own man saying this wasn't some spur-of-the-moment dinghy crossing. It was planned. And it used a fishing boat to try to slip past Border Force.
Tickner also points to how dangerous that shipping lane is. One of the busiest stretches of water in the world, and Eno Gajda took a boat full of people straight through it.
Now here's the other voice in this. Charlie Eastaugh is the Border Security Command's director of maritime and small boats. He says quote "People smugglers care about profit, not the lives they put at risk".
That's Border Security Command putting the focus back on the people in that boat. Not just the man steering it.
And here's the scale of this. The National Crime Agency says it has more than a hundred investigations running right now into people smugglers and smuggling networks.
So Eno Gajda is one case among many.
No defence statement has been reported anywhere. His guilty plea is, for now, his own account of what happened.
And here's what we don't know. What's happened to those sixteen men and the boy since they were handed over. Whether they've claimed asylum. Whether they've been removed from the UK. None of that has been made public.
Eno Gajda is back at Bournemouth Crown Court in a few weeks. For sentencing.
Until then, nobody knows what his punishment will be.
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