Dozens of stowaways fund on Moerdijk industrial terrain

The police found dozens of stowaways on the industrial estate in Moerdijk this week. A total of 32 were found on Wednesday, and another seven on Tuesday. Undocumented migrants are often found in Moerdijk, trying to get to England via the seaport in the Noord-Brabant town, NOS reports.

On Tuesday seven people from Eritrea and Uganda were caught jumping out of a truck. Four men and three women were stopped on Orionweg on Wednesday morning. And a few hours later 25 other people were found in a container on the back of a truck. They were hiding in a refrigerated container loaded with food. The police believe that Wednesday's stowaways mainly involve men and women from Eritrea.

Mayor Jac Klijs of Moerdijk called the stowaways found in the refrigerated container very worrisome. "If the driver had not heard the knocking, we probably would have found 25 bodies in that container", he said to Omroep Brabant.

Last week the mayor asked Minister Ferdinand Grapperhaus of Justice and Security for help. The police team at the harbor only has three officers. It is impossible to keep the Moerdijk seaport safe, the mayor said.

The mayor wants the police and Koninklijke Marechaussee, a policing force that works as part of the Dutch military and is responsible for border control, to tackle the organized criminals behind the stowaways. "They consciously take the risk of people suffocating. We need to tackle these abuses in a coordinated way."