Two people smugglers who tried to bring a family-of-five from Afghanistan into the country hidden in a rubbish-filled van have been jailed.

The youngest child, aged 10, was “extremely unwell and drifting in and out of consciousness” when the family – with children aged 11 and 16 also – were discovered by Border Force officers in Coquelles, in France, on August 27 2018.

Josh Mallaburn, 33, and Liam Cronin, 34, were convicted of assisting unlawful immigration transporting the family following a trial at Maidstone Crown Court in October.

The businessman and bricklayer from Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, had claimed they were on their way back from a drug-fuelled weekend in Amsterdam and suggested the family got into their van while they were fixing a flat tyre, the Home Office said.

But during the trial, jurors were told that a phone belonging to one of the migrants had been found in the front of the van and that a McDonald’s receipt placed the smugglers in Brussels alongside text messages where Cronin revealed he had been “waiting for people” before returning to the UK, the Home Office added.

Mallaburn and Cronin were each sentenced to three years and three months’ imprisonment on Friday, six years after they committed the offences.

Sentencing the pair, Recorder Nicola Makanjuola said their offences threatened UK borders and that sentences for this crime were “heavy” and intended to deter others.

She said she had no doubt the “one-off incident” was for commercial gain, although there was no evidence how much the pair benefited financially.

The judge added that among the reasons she had reduced the sentences from four years in prison, was that the pair, who are both fathers, had had the proceedings “hanging over their heads for six years”.

They will serve half of their sentence in custody and half on licence.

The court also heard that the family involved in the incident were able to enter the UK and were granted asylum in 2022.

Reacting to the sentencing, Home Office criminal and financial investigations regional lead, Chris Foster, said the move sent a strong message to others considering getting involved in the trade.

“In the back of that van was a lot of fishing equipment and building equipment, they were held in pretty squalid and dangerous conditions,” he said.

“There was a real threat those people could have died in that van, if there had been an accident, they could have been seriously injured.

“It’s people like Mallaburn and Cronin preying on families like this, desperate people, and they are selling them a dream, it’s clearly done for monetary purposes.”

Mr Foster also said work continued to identify co-conspirators in the case and that he believed the Government’s new Border Security Command would make their approach “even more powerful”.

On changes seen so far, he said: “It’s early days, the structure is still being built.

“But what I have seen, we were already, in my opinion, working very hard, it’s more cohesive now I believe, I think we’re going to see some real successes with it.”

The case on Friday comes as another two people smugglers were jailed on Monday for helping 14 Iranian nationals come to the UK by plane, using forged Bulgarian passports, the Home Office said.

Daniel Belza, 49, of Purley, and Jalal Saraei Adeh, 45, of London, were jailed for facilitating illegal entry between May and October 2022, after making more than £250,000 from the operation, the government department said.

The pair were sentenced to a combined eight years in prison at Croydon Crown Court.

Mr Foster said: “We’ve really stepped up our efforts in this space right across organised immigration crime, so while at the moment small boats is something in our daily newspapers and on our TV screens, we mustn’t forget organised crime will look for lots of different opportunities to bring people into this country illegally.”