UK leader tells Interpol meeting world must ‘wake up’ to threat from people-smugglers

People-smuggling gangs sending migrants across the English Channel in small boats are a serious threat to global security and should be treated like terror networks, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has told an international law-enforcement conference.

Starmer told a meeting of the international police organization Interpol that "the world needs to wake up to the severity of this challenge."

"People-smuggling should be viewed as a global security threat similar to terrorism," he said.

Starmer, a former chief prosecutor for England and Wales, said his government would be "taking our approach to counterterrorism, which we know works, and applying it to the gangs." That means more cooperation between law enforcement agencies, closer coordination with other countries and unspecified "enhanced" powers for law enforcement, he said.

Starmer said that in...