Our reporter spent a day with the busiest immigration enforcement team in the UK
Immigration enforcement lead for Wales and the west of England, Richard Johnson, during a job at a Chinese takeaway in Blackwood, Caerphilly borough(Image: Media Wales)
A queue of customers are turned away at Red Hot Goodies Chinese takeaway in Blackwood as frantic shouting in Mandarin is heard behind the curtain which separates the front desk from the kitchen that leads to a modest, cramped apartment upstairs.
Five immigration officers donned in stab vests which read ‘Immigration Enforcement’ quickly locate each person in the building before one of them, who was clearly serving customers seconds before, is arrested and the takeaway is closed for the night.
The suspected illegal worker, a woman from China who only gives her first name and refutes suggestions she is working at the takeaway despite being seen working behind the till, is not the person the officers are looking for but she is arrested anyway. It transpires the young woman, a former marketing student who arrived in the town in Caerphilly borough two months ago, reached the UK legally via a skilled worker’s visa but in reality she is carrying out what is deemed unskilled work by helping out behind the till at the takeaway. Her stay is therefore illegal and she is informed she will have to leave the UK as soon as possible.
She found the family who run the unremarkable takeaway in a quiet residential street on the internet, the young male owner tells officer Richard Johnson who leads the raids. He says he has never paid her before he shows the officers the company’s bank statements which show the woman is paying him £280 a month to live in the flat upstairs with the family.
Trying to block out the owner’s mother, who continues to shout over the officers in Mandarin, they establish she’s effectively being given reduced rent in exchange for her labour. The owner claims he knows nothing about the woman other than her name, age, and that her passport is in date. For our free daily briefing on the biggest issues facing the nation sign up to the Wales Matters newsletter here.
Richard asks: “The only reason she came here was to help you in this shop?” The owner replies: “I think she was homeless and had nowhere to go.” Richard asks: “Why did you think she was homeless?” “I just took a guess,” he replies.
It emerges the takeaway has been fined for having an illegal worker here before. The owner is given a referral notice and told he faces another potential fine of up to £60,000.
Fines are now at £45,000 for a first-time offence and up to £60,000 for offences after that. Once a notice is issued it is taken up by a central immigration office in Manchester who investigate further and decide the appropriate punishment.
A queue of customers are turned away at Red Hot Goodies Chinese takeaway in Blackwood during a visit from UK Immigration Enforcement which results in a woman being arrested(Image: Media Wales)
The young woman shows proof she has booked a flight back to China for next week and promises the officers she will leave the country. As we leave the takeaway Richard explains: “You get people who’ve come over on small boats and in the back of lorries or in through the backdoor through Ireland but often the people we’re dealing with have come into the country legally but then they breach the terms of their visa.
“That woman there had come in on a skilled worker visa and was clearly carrying out unskilled work so she’s broken the rules of the system. The skilled worker visa is strictly for people to come to this country and contribute skilled work. We regularly encounter people who’ve come in using the skilled worker visa and they’re behind a till serving in a restaurant or takeaway or a corner shop.
“If we arrest someone we have to ask them first: ‘Are you prepared to return voluntarily?’ And if they book a flight and show evidence that they’ve booked it they may not get detained. More and more now when we catch them they tend to book a flight and go. We don’t get much hassle.
One person was arrested at the takeaway which was closed for the night (Image: Media Wales)
“We don’t often get hassle really. We sometimes do at the car washes. There is a car wash we’ve done a few times and you always know it’s either going to kick off there or people are going to run. You’ve always got to be prepared for people to run but sometimes it still catches you by surprise. Or in a restaurant they might not run but they’ll take their aprons off and go out to the back. There are some peculiar ones. We often find illegal workers cooking in restaurant kitchens and they claim they’re cooking for themselves.”
Hours before arriving at the takeaway in Blackwood the officers doorstep Bella e Buona Italian restaurant in Brynmawr. In the previous two unannounced visits to the restaurant they’d found Albanian illegal workers in the kitchen – some of whom ran when the officers arrived.
This time the officers arrive with the intention to close the business down if they find further evidence of illegal workers – but no illegal activity is found. “It seems they’ve learned their lesson,” Richard says, before getting in the unmarked car and moving onto the next job.
Hours before arriving at the takeaway in Blackwood the officers doorstep Bella e Buona Italian restaurant in Brynmawr(Image: Media Wales)
It’s been a busy week for Richard, from Port Talbot, and his Wales and west of England immigration enforcement team which is based at the government immigration and visa office at Newport Road in Cardiff.
They’ve busted a construction site in Tenby where five illegal workers were discovered including a 17-year-old Romanian who claimed he was an electrician, Choices Express takeaway in Treforest which led to the arrest of a Sri Lankan man who had no right to work, and a Premier Stores at Mound Road, Pontypridd, which led to the arrest of an Indian man for breach of his immigration bail conditions.
Recently during a visit to a dairy farm in Llangedwyn they arrested six Romanians for working in breach of their visit visas while 16 arrests were made at a solar farm in Anglesey.
There has never been a busier time for the team. In the last fiscal year to April 2025 they arrested 1,057 illegal workers marking a 114% rise compared to the year before. It coincides with the number of illegal migrants arriving on UK shores continuing to rise quickly.
The team investigate a restaurant and takeaway but it is decided no illegal activity is happening and they leave the premises quickly after making their inquiries(Image: Media Wales)
“In the last financial year we arrested more illegal workers than any immigration enforcement team in the country,” Richard says. “In the first eight weeks of this financial year we’ve done more than double the same period last year and more than double the arrests. So we’re looking at well over 2,000 if we keep on the same trajectory.”
Is that a good thing or worrying? “It depends which way you look at it I suppose. I think at least it shows our commitment to prioritise and target illegal working.”
On a recent bust of a distribution centre the team found so many illegal workers that it broke the computer system the officers use, which is called Pronto. For each case a name, date of birth, date of arrival in the UK, visa details, contact details, mitigating circumstances, and what the employer has told officers should be recorded.
Richard says the job used to be predictable but is not anymore. “Our activity has rocketed. Now there are far more jobs because illegal working has grown and evolved. It’s still the usual suspects – barbers, takeaways, restaurants, corner shops – but it’s not always like that anymore. It’s rife too in the care sector, construction sector, and even farming. We’re now doing farms in Wales with some success.”
Richard drives us to the next job in the unmarked car(Image: Media Wales)
He paints a heartbreaking picture of countless people he meets every month who arrive in the country having been sold a lie by smuggling gangs that they’ll be able to live and work freely in the UK for good money. In reality they often end up facing squalid living conditions alongside minimal pay and inhumane working hours with the threat of arrest and deportation constantly hanging over them.
“A lot of them, I think, see a better future than is the reality when they get here,” Richard, who has been working in immigration enforcement for 25 years, says. “You do find a lot of them are paying a lot of money to come and then they’ve got to pay that money back. That could be £10,000.
“There are often some really sad cases. We went to a brothel and encountered three Brazilian sex workers and I believed them when they said they never had any intention of being sex workers but they came here and fell into it and the money was better than what they got at home. One had made £10,000 and we seized it all because it had clearly been gained unlawfully. All three of them went back to Brazil with nothing. They’d clearly been duped.
The officers are donned in stab vests which read ‘UK Immigration Enforcement'(Image: PAUL GILLIS / Reach PLC)
“The incentive mainly is financial. If someone is illegal they’ll more than likely work for less money or in certain cases will work for no money at all and would just get accommodation or food in return. Sometimes they’re told when they get here they’ll be working and earning money beyond their wildest dreams and often that’s not the case. They realise the streets aren’t paved with gold.
“It’s clear exploitation but sadly they don’t always see it like that because life might be so difficult for them back home. In many cases they’re living in awful conditions, sharing a room with four or five others, and they’re sending the majority of the money back to their families.”
The team has received a tip-off from a member of the public that another Chinese takeaway in Caerphilly borough, which we’re keeping anonymous, has illegal workers. The officers doorstep the premises and the family of five are clearly panicked. The father and owner of the takeaway repeats he has children and can hardly speak at first, inviting the officers to look in every room, insisting: “No-one is hiding here.”
The officers, as they have been on each job I’ve joined them on, are calm and respectful and realise quickly that nothing illegal is happening at the premises. They make their apologies and leave.
Richard says: “That one is most likely a malicious report.” I ask what he means. “Someone who doesn’t like them. We call it malicious intel. We do always try and corroborate checks to rule out a possibility of malicious intel but if that isn’t possible and we haven’t visited the premises in years we tend to decide it’s probably worth looking at just in case. It’s always difficult because it can be worrying for the owners, particularly if there are children involved.”
The role is now more important and busier than ever(Image: Media Wales)
The officers do get a lot of successful hits from tip-offs from members of the public though. “Sources remain completely anonymous but they tend to be from police, members of the public, or other times it’s us targeting known problem areas,” Richard adds. “At the moment it’s delivery drivers that is a big one for us. They’ll stop to pick up an order and we’ll intercept. But what happens is many of them are in a WhatsApp group together and word will get around about where we are so it can be tricky. It can sound straightforward but it definitely isn’t.”
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