Immigration crisis laid bare as 27,000 illegal immigrants arrested in Britain over four years

THE SCALE of the illegal immigration crisis is laid bare today as figures reveal at least 27,000 migrants have been arrested in the past four years after sneaking into the UK.

A total 28 police forces from the Met in London to Gwent in Wales, Thames Valley and North Yorkshire, have picked up migrants without “leave to enter”.

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They were likely arrested after ‘lorry drops’, raids or found to be illegal after being nicked for committing low level crime.

The figures – from Freedom of Information Requests – show that across the 28 forces, an estimated 27,109 illegal immigrants have been arrested since the start of 2014.

A further 1,144 people have been nicked for “conspiring” to help someone breach UK immigration law - such as gangmasters.

Furious MPs and union leaders said the worrying figures proved the need for more investment in Britain’s porous borders ahead of Brexit.

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Tory backbencher Philip Hollobone said: “These people should be stopped at the border it shouldn’t be up to police to arrest them.

“Something is clearly going wrong.”

Lucy Moreton of the ISU union for borders, immigration and customs workers said: “These figures aren’t really a surprise. There isn’t the odd hole at the border, it’s like a colander.

“People coming in on the back of a lorry, under a van and that’s before you think about the small ports and private airfields.

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“If the Government wants the Border Force to pick up more people at the border, detain and deport them it needs to invest.”

The real figures are likely to be even higher given only 28 of the 43 police forces in England and Wales replied to the FOIs.

Across the police forces, some 933 illegal immigrants “without leave to enter” have been arrested in Warwickshire since 2014, 872 in Leicestershire, 440 in Cheshire, 1,271 in West Yorkshire and 2,685 in Thames Valley.

Gwent cops have nicked 131, Merseyside 462 and Northants 1,136.

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The Met has arrested a total of 21,967 for immigration offences since 2014 with an estimated two-thirds - given arrest rates elsewhere in the country - thought to be those who came into the UK illegally.

David Wood, an ex-director general of immigration enforcement at the Home Office last October told MPs there were likely to be a million illegal immigrants in Britain who will never be deported.

The Home Office last week vehemently defended the Government’s right to tackle illegal immigration as Home Secretary Amber Rudd faced fury over the ‘Windrush’ debacle.

It said illegal immigration “impacts the whole of society, putting pressure on taxpayer-funded public services, leaving vulnerable people at the mercy of exploitative employers or landlords and, at worst, fuelling the abhorrent crimes of modern slavery and human trafficking”.