19 Indians arrested in UK for working illegally

Nineteen Indians, including a woman, have been arrested for working illegally in the UK during a raid on a cloth manufacturing factory in Leicester.

Acting on intelligence, UK Border Agency officers visited the factory called House of Creation on Wednesday and checked the immigration status of staff.

Officers discovered that nineteen of the staff members did not have permission to work in the UK.

They were all Indian nationals, eighteen men and one woman, who had either entered the UK illegally or were working in breach of their visas, officials said.

Fourteen illegal workers were arrested and detained and five were temporarily released on immigration bail.

The authorities are now taking steps to send them back to India as soon as possible.

The business was issued with an on-the-spot penalty notice for employing illegal workers and now faces a fine of 10,000 pounds per illegal worker, unless it can prove that it carried out the correct right-to-work checks on the employees.

"Illegal working adversely affects local communities and denies job opportunities to local people," a UK Border Agency spokesperson said.

Employers are expected to carry out basic checks on identity documents before recruiting new staff.

House of Creation is now facing a potential fine of 190,000 pounds and needs to prove that these checks were made.

"We will continue to work with those employers who wish to comply with the law whilst targeting those employers who think that the law does not apply to them."