Prime Minister Keir Starmer has committed £75m more in funding to the newly established Border Security Command (BSC) to enable the use of “state-of-the-art surveillance equipment” as part of a wider clampdown on immigration.

Starmer made the announcement at the Interpol general assembly in Glasgow, saying that the funding will help the UK in its counter-terrorism efforts along the border, aiming to ease the “fragmentation” of the border force, police, and intelligence agencies.

The new investment compounds on the previously dedicated £75m fund, with new funding going towards technology for the NCA, which Starmer explained was for “advanced data exploitation.” Funding will also be used for 100 specialist investigators and intelligence officers, as well as fostering collaboration with European allies.

The move, which champions technology as a solution to people smuggling and human trafficking, has faced criticisms from human rights advocacy groups, which have noted the decreasing options for refugees and asylum seekers to legally reach the UK.

Migrants’ Rights Networks as well as the Refugee Council have both lamented the UK’s policies, saying that their limiting options for safe and legal immigration has pushed desperate migrants to turn to often unsafe intermediaries in order to seek sanctuary in the UK.

“Current legislation is already making people vulnerable to using intermediaries to get to the UK because they are refusing to offer safe routes for people of all nationalities,” said Fizza Qureshi, CEO of the Migrants’ Rights Network, said.

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“Offering safe routes for all instead of focusing on invasive tech surveillance would reduce the need for anyone to have to use intermediaries to reach the UK, and eliminate the unnecessary investment in surveillance technologies that invade all of our privacies.”

Further, Amnesty International, the global humans rights charity, has said that the UK provides no legal or safe routes for people to come to the UK claiming asylum under current immigration laws, bar a if they are coming from a small select group of countries totalling Ukraine, Hong Kong and Afghanistan.

The previous UK government also made many tech investments in order to prevent migrants crossing the channel on boats to reach the UK, most notably in surveillance tech for the tracking of migrant routes.