Home Office<\/a> said civil penalty referral notices were issued and a liable employer could face a\u202fsubstantial\u202ffine of up to \u00a360,000 per worker if it is found they employed illegal workers and\u202ffailed to\u202fconduct the relevant pre-employment checks.\u202f\u202f\u00a0\n<\/p>\n\n Anna Turley, Minister for Border Security and Asylum, said:\u201cThis government is tackling illegal working and ensuring unscrupulous employers are not exploiting vulnerable individuals and undercutting legitimate business.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cThat is why in Scotland illegal working visits and arrests were at record levels in 2025, and have more than doubled across the UK since the election.”\n<\/p>\n
\n Adam San, Assistant Director of Immigration Enforcement\u2019s Threat Response & Volume Crime Unit, said:\u00a0\u201cI want to thank the team of officers who dealt with this operation with professionalism and sensitivity.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cImmigration Enforcement deal with threats across the UK and this is not limited to illegal activity occurring solely on land. These arrests demonstrate our ability to tackle all illegal working, in whatever form it takes.\u201d\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n The Home office said that in the first six months of 2026, Immigration Enforcement delivered the most successful start to a year on record for illegal working enforcement activity, with a 31% increase on visits and a 20% increase on arrests compared to the same period in 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alongside the Border Security Command, officers boarded 34 fishing vessels in response to reports of modern slavery, labour…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":759145,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[1397,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-759144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=759144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759144\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/759145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=759144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=759144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=759144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}