At Terminal 3 Immigration Officer Lisa Lea check the passport of a man from Pakistan who says he’s here to do some marketing for his fruit and veg business. Lisa is suspicious from the outset when she looks at his passport stamps. She finds out he’s living in Britain and running businesses based in Britain. This is illegal. He denies everything despite compelling evidence. He is refused entry and returned on the next flight back to Pakistan. Another officer at Heathrow, Tim Wetherall, picks up an Indian couple who are found by customs carrying 18,000 cigarettes and 27kilos of tobacco. After the interview the man threatens to kill himself. They are offered asylum and accept. The couple changes their mind at the last minute and the Chief Immigration Officer does a deal with them to protect them from any potential legal problems on return to India.
An Indian student is stopped at passport control. He says he’s not working but pretty soon Immigration Officer Neil Newbury finds out he’s working at Tesco supermarket stacking shelves. The man is caught out and returned home on the next flight. Officer Steve Hassler stops an American who has come to Britain to teach puppetry. He’s an Emmy award winning puppeteer who’s worked on The Muppets and Sesame Street. Yet today things aren’t going his way. He doesn’t have a working Visa. His bags are full of colourful puppets and he does a little show for the camera. Sadly he doesn’t get to teach his classes and is eventually sent back to America.
In India the visa applications for travellers to Britain are decided by a small group of Brits on a 2 year posting in New Delhi. We see them interviewing suspect “students” and other potential visitors like the 35 year old Punjabi who’s just married a 60 year old Welsh woman. The visa officers at the high commission suspect a sham marriage, but can they find any proof?
This must be the boldest enforcement operation. Street Ops, as they are known, involve a group of immigration officers in full immigration uniform trying to spot illegal immigrants amongst in busy streets. In this episode we follow two Street Ops. The first at North Greenwich Tube Station, where a man is stopped and questioned but then wriggles free and runs. He’s caught but a passerby gets involved, there’s a scuffle and lots of shouting and threats. The other operation at Stratford Station picks up a number of illegal workers on their way into work. These operations are very successful for UKBA as they always get results.
It’s 8am and Immigration Officer Bridgette McCarthy gets a call on the radio. There’s a lorry crammed with car tyres that’s about to board a ferry any second but they suspect it may also have people hiding deep inside. Bridgette’s team rush over, and after clambering over hundred of tyres they find 7 Indian men. Minutes later there’s another call about another lorry ready to board a ferry. They find 8 Eritreans. A third call comes in. It’s getting frenetic. A Vietnamese family has been discovered inside a lorry. Scarily, to try and avoid detection the officers’ CO2 detectors, the family have been wearing black bin liners over their heads. This is already the busiest morning at Calais in the series. And then to top it off there’s a fourth call. Bridgette’s team pick up 4 clandestines hiding in a luxury yacht. The yacht isn’t on the sea, it’s part of a shipment of luxury boats being transported inside a lorry.
Heathrow A routine passport control check with Immigration Officer Steve Hassler turns into a marathon investigation. The “student” from Pakistan makes a mess of his answers and Hassler smells a rat. Spanning 2 days, 2 Chief Immigration Officers and a second Immigration Officer, the man, they discover is a taxi driver with a wife and 2 children, living in Luton. He is refused entry to Britain. But on appeal he is allowed to stay while his case is investigated. London Enforcement - Cleaners The Enforcement team at Beckett House, London, raid a cleaning company and arrest 2 suspected illegal immigrants. All they have to do now is prove where they’re from and find their passports. Easier said than done. What follows is an emotional and frustrating day in the life of an immigration team.
There’s never enough time or people to search every lorry coming into Britain from the Continent. Immigration Officer John Cassidy explains the role of the ‘Spotters’ who picks out which lorries should be searched. On an average day they can find up to 40 clandestines. Today is unusual because they’ve been searching lorries all night, with their CO2 tubes and sense of smell, apparently clandestines who live rough have a very noticeable ‘aroma’. Eventually, as daylight breaks they make a discovery. Five Iraqis are found onboard a lorry. They are later released back outside the port to try again another day.
Dallas Court in Salford, Greater Manchester is one of 14 reporting centres in Britain where asylum seekers, foreign criminals and those caught working illegally come to make weekly reports. This is to show the Home Office they are following the instructions given to them while their paperwork and legal status is processed. A man arrives thinking he’s making his routine weekly report, but he is about to be arrested and sent back to Nigeria. He’s a convicted sex offender who has served his sentence, but one of the conditions was that he is eventually deported to his homeland. What he doesn’t realise is that this will happen today. He is later taken to a detention centre at Heathrow and put on a plane to Lagos with 5 burly minders escorting him all the way. In 2007 over 4200 foreign national criminals were deported in this manner.
Britain’s biggest visa fraud case is busted by UKBA and the Met Police. Jatinder Sharma a solicitor who has previously represented Abu Hamza, set up a company called Univisa to help foreigners into Britain using fake documents. Sharma earned millions of pounds charging huge fees; he and his two wives were given sentences totalling 21 years. Also in this programme is the Glasgow enforcement team who visit an Indian restaurant to find illegal workers and at Terminal 3, Heathrow, officer Lisa Lea stops a foreign student trying to enter Britain using false papers.
A piece of scrub land in Calais has been nicknamed the jungle. It’s where “clandestines” lie in wait to sneak on to trucks heading for Britain. We film in the jungle to find out why, after travelling thousands of miles, the immigrants want to go the extra mile to get into Britain and not just stay in Europe. We film with the teams whose job it is to search trucks to stop this illegal human traffic. Also, an enforcement team in Stoke find illegal workers at a car wash firm who claim they’re 15 years old. One of the car washers we discover was recently removed from Britain to Iran after taking part in a Home Office scheme called Assisted Voluntary Repatriation. He pocketed £500 cash and a free flight. He came straight back to Britain through Calais on the back of a truck.
A Jamaican man is arrested in Birmingham on his wedding day. He’s an overstayer who mistook his certificate to get married as permission to live in the UK. He was sent back to Jamaica. In Glasgow a Pakistani national is arrested at the registry office minutes before he was to be married to a Scottish woman. The man claims it’s true love. The bride says she was paid to be there. Also, the Brazilian man stopped at Heathrow wants to see his British husband. A few questions about his immigration status reveal lies, deceit and a stretch in prison.
A couple from Guyana are thought to have been living under stolen identities for over 13 years. UKBA’s Criminal Investigation Team have been investigating this for a year and we join them on the day they make a surprise visit to the couple’s home. This leads to confessions of guilt and relief as they reveal they got away with it for so long. In an enforcement raid in Wales immigration officers seize a couple of illegal workers fleeing from the rear of a takeaway. There are more illegal workers found inside, some have been in the country for over a decade living below the radar of the Home Office.
At the British High Commission in Lagos a pig farmer is quizzed about his colourful history in Britain of dodgy travel documents and a fracas with the police. He accuses the British visa system of letting him down and preventing him from running his pig farm. Visa clearance officer Phil Morgan tries to find his way through the bluster. In this episode, for the first time on UK Border Force, we have access to a foreign airport. At Lagos Murtala Mohammed International Airport a lone female UKBA officer advises airline staff on travellers to Britain. It’s a dangerous job and she travels to work every day in a bullet-proof car and a support jeep with armed guards. Today a pregnant woman bound for America via London is stopped at the gate. She suspects this is a plot to have the baby in America to get US citizenship. The flight is held up and tension mounts.
We have rare access behind the scenes in an Immigration Removal Centre where the UKBA officers are planning a mass deportation on a specially chartered flight, codenamed Operation Aardvark. In London the enforcement team bust a network of illegal workers at the home of a Chinese takeaway owner. In a room with 6 beds they find a group of men about to eat their dinner. They also find a pregnant woman and a child but can they find any passports? And at Heathrow, Immigration Officer Steve Hassler is on his last case before he leaves for another job. And it’s a fine end to his career as a “student” makes it difficult for him to separate truth from lies.
For the first time television cameras go inside the British High Commission in Lagos, Nigeria. It’s a city that has a worldwide reputation for fraud and where travel documents are sold openly on street corners. Here the UKBA visa team are swamped with applications for UK visas, and they rarely have a dull day. Staff at a steakhouse restaurant in London’s West End are grilled by the London enforcement team. A Ukrainian waitress takes them on a wild goose chase searching for her passport. And in Calais the search teams find what’s known as an “axle-hugger” along with a group of Vietnamese perilously wrapped in plastic bin-liners as they try to avoid the officers’ CO2 probes.
At Heathrow’s Terminal Two a Nigerian with a forged passport is stopped by immigration. His tales of murder and robbery are undermined by his insistence that he is only 15 years old and has been sent here by his Uncle London. It’s a fascinating case with a surprise ending. Also in this episode is the “euro criminal” stopped at Calais. He was born in Lithuania, lives in Ireland, wants to travel from France to Britain and is wanted for ram-raiding in Austria. Another traveller stopped at immigration, this time in Heathrow Terminal three, is a transgendered woman who is suffering from terminal cancer and carrying just ten dollars. But does she qualify to get into the country?
The owner of a nail bar in Southampton is an asylum seeker whose partner is a known illegal immigrant. He’s suspected of employing other illegal immigrants as nail technicians. The enforcement team find the owner’s girlfriend holding a baby that hasn’t been registered and the employees deny being illegal. The team has its work cut out deciding out who stays and who goes. A traveller at Heathrow impresses immigration officer Neil Newbury with his name, Dazzling Denzel. But the light fades on his chances of entry when his bag is searched revealing some rather interesting forgeries. Also at Heathrow a specialist customs unit are on the prowl for people about to leave Britain. They look for people carrying too much cash. The maximum amount of cash you can carry out of Britain is 10,000 Euros. The clock is ticking on an Eritrean with £15,000 in used notes who has to decide whether to catch his plane without his money or miss the flight and argue the case.
A freak snow storm shuts down the British transport system. Just one flight lands at Heathrow, re-directed from Gatwick. A charismatic passenger from Antigua charms the immigration staff. But his complex case creates a division between the immigration officer and her boss. A Welsh immigration team makes a routine arrest at a Chinese takeaway but when they search for a passport they find a complicated family arrangement. Also in this programme, customs officers at Heathrow target travellers who try to smuggle illegal animal products into Britain. They find bags of Ugandan grasshoppers, illegal Turkish cheese and the testicles of a grizzly bear.