Meet Adele, the dog trained to sniff out smuggled small boats

More than 1,600 miles (2,574km) from the white cliffs of Dover is one of the world’s busiest land borders.

Customs staff use an English pointer called Adele to carry out checks at this gateway to the European Union, a location that is a frontline against people smugglers.

At the Kapitan Andreevo border control point in Bulgaria, on the border with Turkey, they are trying to disrupt the flow of small boats that are being transported to the beaches of northern France, often disguised as paddling pools or tarpaulins.

Adele, a UK-funded sniffer dog, has been trained to disrupt the smuggling by sniffing out the rubber the boats are made from.

The UK is working with the Bulgarian authorities, who have now detected more than 200 vessels that have been smuggled across the border.

BBC South East was given access to officials who say criminals are hiding the boats in lorries, coaches and car boots.

“Adele was trained with rubber, cut off from boats that have been found on the British shores, after being abandoned by the smugglers,” said senior customs inspector Sonia Daneva.

“The boats are deflated and flat packed and usually declared as other inflatable items, such as pools, tarpaulins and something made of rubber to evade customs control.”

The UK and Bulgaria formalised their cooperation on tackling organised immigration crime under the previous government in February 2023.

The UK said it had invested more than £1.2m for Bulgaria’s border agencies, delivering vehicles, thermal imaging devices, drones and specialist training in vehicle search and behavioural detection.

The authorities said the number of vessels being seized had been increasing.

Philip Nikolov, head of the Kapitan Andreevo Border Customs Police, told the BBC: “Sixty officers of ours have been sent to Great Britain to be specially trained to detect small boats.

“We can all see the fruitful end results of all this training, this year 72 small boats were detected and seized and for the whole three years of co-operation we have seized 200 boats.”

Simone Alleyne, senior manager in the international team at the National Crime Agency (NCA), said many boats were sourced in China and smuggled into the EU through Bulgaria.

“You will get the flow from Bulgaria up to Germany and France where the small boat equipment is stored and then used across the Channel,” she said.

The NCA said about 750 boats had been seized across Europe over the last two years.

“The engines are low powered and definitely not at a level where they should be used for making those crossings,” added Ms Alleyne.

“Organised crime groups know that law enforcement are detecting, intercepting and wanting to seize that equipment, so we have seen numbers [of migrants] in boats increase.”

In November, NCA officers, working with the Bulgarian Border Police and customs agency, ramped up checks with more than 350 lorries and cars inspected.

A number of migrants were detected trying to cross the border illegally.

For years this part of the Balkans has been one of the main smuggling routes into the European Union.

However, in the first 10 months of 2025 there were more than 42,000 irregular crossings in the Eastern Mediterranean, a 25% drop compared with the year before.

But several miles from the Turkish border, in a small hamlet called Shtit, the BBC was told that migrants still attempt to make the crossing.

One local resident said: “The border police catch them, they bring them here, there are some interrogations, some investigations, some of them are sent somewhere, some of them they send back.

“What we know is they are still trying, they try with ladders to jump over the fence, but yes they are still trying to cross the border.”

Despite the efforts to disrupt the supply chain of small boats to the beaches of northern France, the numbers making the perilous crossing have risen in 2025 compared with 2024.

A total of 39,292 people have arrived via this route between 1 January and 4 December.

This figure is close to the 2022 peak of 45,774.

The increase in arrivals in 2025 has coincided with a rise in the average number of people arriving per small boat.

Chris Philp MP, Shadow Home Secretary, said he was “pleased to see that boats are being seized” between Bulgaria and Turkey “as part of an agreement signed under the previous Conservative Government”.

“However, illegal immigration is getting worse under this Labour Government,” he said.

“Asylum claims have hit a record level and numbers of illegal immigrants in hotels have gone up since July 2024.”

Minister for Border Security and Asylum Alex Norris said organised immigration crime had “wreaked havoc” on the UK’s borders.

He added: “The criminal gangs who think they can abuse our borders are wildly mistaken, in addition to increasing disruptions by 33% I am removing the pull factors that make the UK the destination of choice for migrants.

“We must go further and faster, our sweeping reforms to tackle illegal migration will remove incentives and scale up removals, building on the 50,000 already returned.”

Additional reporting by Jonathan Fagg and Ema Sabljak.