A PEOPLE smuggler who flew illegal Albanians into the UK on a private plane has been stripped of his British citizenship – despite shockingly winning an appeal to stay.
Myrteza Hilaj, 51, was jailed for three-and-a-half years for offering £10k flights to at least nine undocumented immigrants in 2017.
The businessman was snared in a National Crime Agency sting, prompting an investigation into his own immigration status which revealed the Home Office missed multiple chances to deport him.
Hilaj, alongside crime sidekick Kreshnik Kadena, would take off from North Weald airfield near his home in Epping Forest, Essex.
The crook’s personal pilot would fly to Le Touquet airport on the coast of northern France to collect three to four people with no right to enter Britain.
The jet would then fly to tiny Stapleford Aerodrome, also in Epping Forest, where the passengers would leave the plane and be collected by Kadena without being processed by immigration enforcement officers.
Each trafficked person would pay “up to £10,000” for the 90-minute flight and “a few hundred pounds extra” for fake documents, the NCA added.
Both smugglers were convicted of facilitating the commission of a breach of immigration law at Southwark Crown Court in March.
Home Office officials launched a separate probe into Hilaj’s right to remain after he entered as a supposed refugee in July 1999.
He claimed to have been born in war-torn Kosovo, telling officials that his home had been destroyed and his family wiped out by Serbian forces.
The crook’s initial asylum claim was rejected as not credible in 2000 but he was not deported and allowed to stay in Britain without documents until 2008.
Hilaj was granted permanent leave to remain while still pretending to be Kosovan – despite his parents admitting their son was Albanian while applying to visit him from his home country.
In forms submitted to the Home Office, Hilaj even said he’d been on holiday to Albania three times in five years, spending a combined 82 days in Tirana.
Yet the thug was still allowed to naturalise as a British citizen in June 2013, after nearly 14 years in the country.
Ex-Home Secretary Sajid Javid stripped Hilaj of his passport in May 2018 after a probe revealed the crook had obtained it by deception.
The Albanian appealed to an immigration tribunal – admitting he had lied about being Kosovan, but arguing controversial European human rights laws meant he should not be booted out.
He added his marriage to wife Enkeleta meant being sent home would make life too difficult.
A first-tier court bizarrely accepted the claim, but the ruling was overturned on appeal after Home Office lawyers proved Hilaj was still a threat.
I find that the Appellant’s use of deception including his dishonest completion of the application forms, is sufficient to justify the deprivation decision
Judge Christopher Hanson
Judge Christopher Hanson ruled: “I find that the Appellant’s use of deception including his dishonest completion of the application forms, is sufficient to justify the deprivation decision.”
Hilaj is likely to be deported when he is released from prison.
Former Tory frontbencher Sir Alec Shelbrooke said: “Without a shadow of a doubt, anyone convicted of people smuggling who is a dual national should be stripped of their British citizenship.
“The biggest failure of the Sunak government was failing to implement Priti Patel’s system of a single court of appeal.
“I would urge the current government to streamline this process with something similar.”
People smugglers can be deprived of their citizenship by the Home Secretary after Supreme Court judges backed treating them like terrorists and serial killers earlier this year.
