Seven members of a people smuggling gang who hid migrants behind vehicle dashboards have been jailed.
The group, which also used a forgery factory in Greece to alter identity documents, brought people to the United Kingdom either by plane or road.
UK Border Force officers found a Vietnamese woman "dangerously concealed inside a cramped compartment" behind a dashboard in a vehicle heading to England from France in June 2022, the Home Office said.
The gang's ringleader, Mukhlis Jamal Hamadamin, was sentenced at Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court to 13 years in prison for offences including conspiring to assist unlawful immigration and possessing an identity document with improper intention.
The driver of the vehicle in which the woman was found, Jozef Balog, pleaded guilty to assisting unlawful immigration.
A month after the first woman was discovered, Border Force officers stopped the gang trying to smuggle another vulnerable woman in a secret compartment behind the dashboard of their vehicle.
At a hearing in October, Emily Etherington pleaded guilty to facilitating illegal entry into the UK. She was sentenced to two years in prison, suspended for two years.
Her partner, Redar Curtis, admitted the same offence following a trial and was jailed for four years and six months.
