Habib Behsodi claimed he made £350 on each trip (Picture: PA)

A taxi driver who smuggled Vietnamese people into the UK using a ‘conveyor belt’ of lorries has avoided jail.

Habib Behsodi, 42, was part of a gang bringing people into the country illegally in the backs of lorries across.

Intercepted phone messages show the trafficking network referred to the humans he was smuggling as ‘pork’ or ‘chicken’.

Those being transported are thought to have paid up to £17,000 for passage by entering into a debt agreement – working off some or all of their fee in places such as cannabis farms on arrival.

In December, a Birmingham Crown Court jury convicted Behsodi, and his co-accused 33-year-old Hai Xuan Le, of Grove Lane, Birmingham, for their roles in the cross-continent operation.

Both were found guilty of conspiring to facilitate illegal immigration.

At a sentencing hearing on Tuesday, Kelly Brocklehurst, prosecuting, said: ‘The movement of immigrants was something of a conveyor belt.

‘As one set of migrants were either turned back in a failed attempt, or en route in a successful attempt, communications in evidence suggested that yet others were being queued up by the conspirators, in further arrangements to facilitate unlawful immigration.

The human cargo he helped transport referred to as ‘pork’ and ‘chicken’, intercepted phone messages showed (Picture: PA)

‘The method of transportation involved taking migrants from a safe house in Europe, often it seems by taxi, to meet up with some form of HGV.’

The lorries, going by ferry or Eurotunnel, then arrived in Kent, with immigrants ‘off-loaded to drivers such as Behsodi’.

The court heard Behsodi, from Chatham, Kent, made two journeys, carrying two immigrants, first to Birmingham, and then on a second trip, to Wolverhampton.

Behsodi, who lost his taxi licence on arrest and now works as a delivery driver, had claimed to have made up to £250 per trip.