Brazen ‘stowaway selfies’ posted on Facebook appear to graphically illustrate the extent of illegal Albanian migration into Britain.

Pictures of young people hidden in lorries are uploaded on pages including ‘Albanians in London’, alongside the caption: ‘On the way.’

Other images offering fake IDs and charges to book a place with a smuggler expose how gangs of people-traffickers seem to be cashing in on social media.

Yesterday even Albania’s government branded Britain a soft touch compared with other nations, and urged the UK to send migrants back home more quickly.

Meanwhile families there openly admitted sending their children to sneak into Britain to find a better life. Many end up in foster care or at the mercy of criminals, a Daily Mail investigation reveals.

Pictures of young people hidden in lorries are uploaded on pages including ‘Albanians in London’, alongside the caption: ‘On the way’

Families in Albania openly admitted sending their children to sneak into Britain to find a better life. Many end up in foster care or at the mercy of criminals, a Daily Mail investigation reveals

Some are forced to work as drug mules for Albanian crime gangs – which police recently described as the ‘most ruthless the UK has ever seen’.

Images on three Facebook sites purportedly show young Albanians celebrating their illegal entry into Britain. Laughing, holding bottles of drink and posing with the Albanian flag, the teenagers’ ‘stowaway selfies’ are on pages which can reach 60,000 followers.

One image appears to show a man in a van, and is captioned ‘God willing, I will be in England by New Year’.

Another photo shows a row of grinning young men lying in the back of a lorry, which appears to have been rigged with breathing tubes to give them fresh air.

Captioned ‘The way to London’, the picture was posted on a Facebook page devoted to helping youngsters reach the UK from an area of Albania including a village named Krume – where almost every family is said to have at least one member already in Britain.

Truck driver tried to smuggle in 16 migrants A van driver caught smuggling 16 illegal immigrants into the UK has been jailed for more than five years. Harbans Doll was trying to sneak three Iraqi families including a five-month-old baby and two Albanian women into Britain in the back of a hired Ford Transit van. The 61-year-old told Border Force officials: ‘I thought I was just delivering furniture.’ The father of one claimed he had ‘met a man at a pub’ near his home in Langley, near Slough, and was offered £500 to collect a load from France. Officials stopped the van at the controls at the Channel Tunnel terminal in Coquelles – effectively the British border on French soil. When they searched the vehicle they found it three-quarters full of beanbags and chairs with a double mattress stood upright part way inside the van. Hiding behind the mattress the officers found 16 people, including five children. Doll was taken to a police station in Folkestone but initially refused to answer questions about why he hired the van. He insisted he had simply been hired to collect furniture, adding: ‘I was shocked there were illegal immigrants in the back.’ Yesterday at Canterbury Crown Court he was sentenced to five and a half years in prison after admitting people smuggling. David Fairclough, assistant director of the Border Force, said the group of migrants were handed over to French border police. He added: ‘Although Doll offered no explanation for his behaviour, the judge considered in his sentencing that the motivation was financial. ‘Offences like this, where individuals take advantage of the desperation of others for personal gain, are among the worst that we deal with.’ Advertisement

Other images suggest it costs £8,000 to ride in the back of a lorry or £3,000 to hide in the chassis.

One picture shows wads of cash spread across tables, in an apparent boast of the success young Albanians enjoy once they reach the UK.

Many pictures are captioned: ‘Inside the lorry to UK.’ Youngsters strike a trademark pose of intertwining their hands to reflect the Albanian flag of a double-headed eagle.

One Facebook post offers cards for NVQ qualifications – without needing to complete the courses – ‘for all the Albanians living in England’.

It also offers bricklaying qualifications and provides a phone number, or urges people to get in contact via Facebook.

Albanians last year made up the second-highest number of unaccompanied children seeking asylum in Britain – with more applicants than from war-ravaged Syria.

Many are encouraged to travel here by their parents, who take them part of the way before helping to pay traffickers to spirit them across the Channel, officials said.

Most of the unaccompanied minors are economic migrants, some of whom falsely claim to have been beaten by their parents or say they are victims of blood feuds to boost their asylum claims.

But when their claims are rejected, many vanish from state-funded foster care and are forced work for ‘slave gangs’ in car washes to pay off huge debts – up to £12,000 per trip – owed to people smugglers, Albanian officials warn.

Albania is not in the EU, but because it is applying to become a member, its citizens are free to travel through the ‘borderless’ Schengen area.

They can reach the Channel without showing a passport. Teenage Albanian boys are taken with their parents or other close relatives through the Schengen area and left at ports in France, Belgium or Holland.

From there they are fixed up with people smugglers who take them to the UK where they are provided social care – usually with a foster family – and schooling.

Yesterday, Albania’s deputy internal affairs minister Rovena Voda urged the UK to follow Germany and France in swiftly sending home under-18s who have asylum claims rejected.

Mrs Voda said: ‘The reason so many go to the UK rather than Germany or France or the Netherlands is that those countries do much more to deport them earlier. In Britain this is not the case, and this makes it more attractive.’

She added that some parents use their children as pawns, sending them over to get asylum before following them to the UK.

The Mail visited one village in northern Albania where residents spoke of sending their children for a better life because there was ‘no future for them’ there.

Images on three Facebook sites purportedly show young Albanians celebrating their illegal entry into Britain. Laughing, holding bottles of drink and posing with the Albanian flag, the teenagers’ ‘stowaway selfies’ are on pages which can reach 60,000 followers

But Flamur Dauti, a school headmaster in the village of Krume, warned Facebook pages were fuelling a false promise. ‘It’s all a lie. Social media is helping to feed the myth,’ he said. ‘There are pictures of them surrounded by cash, but usually this is all the takings from the car wash for a day they’ve been made to count. It doesn’t belong to them.

‘Life is very hard for those who go and they would be much better off staying in Albania.’

Residents also scorned the British ambassador to Albania, Duncan Norman, who has visited the area and declared that Albanians living illegally in the UK should return home.

They called him a hypocrite because ‘he would do the same for his children’ if he did not live in luxury. Meanwhile Albanian MP Ervin Salianji warned that high charges for human traffickers meant migrants were often forced to take jobs with ruthless Albanian crime gangs operating in the UK to pay their huge debts.

He said: ‘These gangs will not only take money from the family but also use the kids in the streets to be drug mules and [commit] theft in Britain.’

The National Crime Agency warned earlier this year that Albanian gangs have established a high-profile influence in organised crime, with ‘considerable control’ across the UK drugs market. Kathryn Holloway, the Bedfordshire Police and Crime Commissioner, recently said that the ‘sheer brutality’ of the gangs made them ‘the most ruthless the UK has ever seen’.

According to the Home Office, last year 407 unaccompanied Albanian children travelling alone claimed asylum in the UK. Only Afghanistan had a higher number.

A Home Office spokesman said: ‘The UK has a proud history of hosting, supporting and protecting those in need, including some of the most vulnerable children affected by the migrant crisis.

‘Most Albanian unaccompanied children who claim asylum in the UK are found not to be in need of international protection. We are working to establish a safe and effective way to return those unaccompanied children to their home country, where in many cases they will be able to reunite with their family.’

A Facebook spokesman said: ‘People smuggling is illegal and any posts, pages or groups that co-ordinate this activity are not allowed on Facebook.

‘We thank the Mail for alerting us to these posts and where content has been found to breach our people smuggling policies, we have removed them.

‘We urge people to continue using our reporting tools to flag any content that they suspect may be illegal.’

Albanian minister claims Britain is ENCOURAGING her young citizens to sneak into the UK - and is being too soft on deporting her people

Soft-touch Britain is irresponsibly encouraging Albanian youngsters to try to sneak in to the UK, a senior Albanian minister claimed yesterday.

Rovena Voda, deputy minister of internal affairs, said Britain should act more swiftly to send home unaccompanied under-18s who have asylum claims rejected – as France and Germany do. The failure to do so is making the UK a ‘more attractive’ destination to teenagers, she warned.

She suggested the money Britain would save by no longer having to provide social care for the youngsters could be invested in projects in Albania to encourage teenagers to stay.

Rovena Voda, Albanian deputy minister of internal affairs, said Britain should act more swiftly to send home unaccompanied under-18s who have asylum claims rejected

Mrs Voda said: ‘These children are not being trafficked to Britain against their will. Most are brought part of the way by their parents and relatives. They do it for economic reasons.

‘It’s hard. Parents believe they are doing their best for their children and giving them more chance in the future, but they are doing significant psychological damage by abandoning them. The children suffer from separation anxiety and there is also a problem with them being sucked into virtual slave labour or crime if they fail to get asylum.

‘The reason so many go to the UK rather than Germany or France or the Netherlands is that those countries do much more to deport them earlier. In Britain this is not the case, and this makes it more attractive to them.

‘If Britain did more to return them more quickly it would help.’

Unaccompanied Albanian children who report to the authorities when they arrive sometimes claim to be escaping from blood feuds to claim asylum. But Mrs Voda said most claims were false.

She added: ‘There is also a problem with parents sending children ahead because they think it will be easier for them to get asylum and the parents will follow. It’s part of a strategy.’ The Albanian government has launched a crackdown on foreign child abandonment and in the last three months has started prosecuting nearly 50 cases of parents who left their children abroad, several en route to the UK. It is also developing a border checking system to monitor all parents or relatives leaving with children to see if they fail to return with them.

But Mrs Voda warned that a major problem is the false image presented of life in Britain by those living there.

‘Social media is a problem. People like to show off on it and it encourages teenagers to go. They think it will be this amazing time when it is not like that at all.’

A Home Office spokesman said: ‘Most Albanian unaccompanied children who claim asylum in the UK are found not to be in need of international protection. We are working to establish a safe and effective way to return those children to their home country, where in many cases they will be able to reunite with their family.’

London's most unlikely suburb - 1,600 miles away: Snow-capped Albanian village where almost every family has sent a child to the UK

Surrounded by snow-capped mountains, Krumë is London’s most unlikely suburb.

But despite being 1,600 miles from the British capital, locals in the Albanian village think of themselves as living in one of its neighbourhoods.

Officials say almost every family has at least one member in Britain and usually at least one more hoping to get there.

Scores of village children have gone to Britain illegally with people-smugglers, usually with the help of their parents.

With little work in the northern Albanian community, young men spend days in the village’s Bar Kafe London discussing how they can get to its namesake.

Among those to have sent their children to the UK are council officers and policemen, who borrow up to £12,000 from loan sharks to pay people-smugglers. Parents say sending their children away offers their only hope of a secure future.

Former policeman Isa Rexha has not seen his son for two years since, aged 15, he was bundled into the back of a lorry to sneak into the UK after travelling to France with his uncle.

Mr Rexha said: ‘We miss him with all our hearts, but we don’t want him home.

‘We cannot afford to support him. There is nothing for him here. Nothing.’

The teenager lives with foster parents in south-west London and receives state-funded schooling while he trains to become a plumber.

Next year, an immigration hearing will decide whether to grant indefinite leave to stay.

If his case is rejected, as most are, he has vowed to remain in Britain illegally.

His family knows he risks of being drawn into Albanian gangs in the UK that use children who have gone ‘underground’ as slave labour in car washes or as drug mules or dealers.

Standing by a Union flag in his bar, built using money sent by his brothers in Britain, Liman Morina joked: ‘Albania is just a neighbourhood of London.

‘Even a person in a highly paid job here earns less than a low-paid person in London.’

Education officials in the local province of Kukes claim 834 teenagers quit school between 2013 and 2016 – with many thought to have tried to get to the UK.

Sabah Lleshi, 16, said 15 of his friends are in Britain – and he plans to try next month. He added: ‘There is more hope in England. My parents don’t want me to go, but I am determined.’ Market worker Sahit Cahani, 46, paid traffickers £12,000 to get his son to Manchester, where he earns £30 a day washing cars.

He said: ‘He left when he was 18 and went to Calais to try to get on the back of the lorry. He lived in terrible conditions. In the end I agreed to get money for a people-smuggler. Seeing him go has sucked the life out of me.’

Others go to more extreme lengths than just giving money.

A council official describes how he paid £14,000 to smuggle his two sons – then aged 15 and 16 – into the UK three years ago.

They are housed by social services, using fake names to avoid jeopardising their asylum bids.

He added: ‘Families will arrange for a wife to tell the police that the husband beats the children.

‘It means they get an official police report which can help their asylum claim.’

But Flamur Dauti, headmaster of the Skenderbeu school in Krumë, said most were lured to the UK on a false promise, adding: ‘People return for a holiday driving a fancy car. But usually this is a car they have hired for a week. They don’t own it.

‘Everyone boasts, but the reality is hard for most of those who go, and carries many dangers.’