how do eastern european people smuglers operate?

Question

it is terrible that every year many underage girls are smuggled into Britain for sex trafficking and underground prostitution. I know that once ensnared they are often beaten, drugged and held captive. But how do the pimps get hold of their victims in the first place? Surely if someone from Albania, or some similair place, wants to emigrate to Britain they would go through the channels of the immigration service? Is it that the criminals pose as officials or employment agents?

Answer 1

I was told by a girl who had been in that situation that her parents got divorced and abandoned her when she was 9 years old so she lived in a shelter for homeless children and at age 14 was taken from there and sold.

Answer 2

Sometimes a young woman will be offered a respectable job. When she arrives in the UK the gangsters take her passport and use whatever is necessary, threats against her family back home or violence, to get her to do what they want.
Only a few months ago we were celebrating the end of the slave trade. The fate of these 'sex slaves' shows we may have been premature.

Answer 3

Human traffickers bribe Immigration officers from the point of origin to the destination.