The 609 arrests, compared to 352 in January 2024, were made at over 800 premises including nail bars, restaurants, car washes and convenience stores, a government statement said.

On taking office last year Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer immediately scrapped his Conservative predecessor Rishi Sunak’s plan to deter undocumented migration to the UK by deporting new arrivals to Rwanda.

Instead he pledged to “smash the gangs” to bring the numbers down.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said employers had for too long been able to “exploit illegal migrants and too many people have been able to arrive and work illegally with no enforcement action ever taken”.

“We are boosting enforcement to record levels alongside tough new legislation to smash the criminal gangs that undermine our border security and who have been getting away with it for far too long,” she said.

Undocumented migration by people who try to take small, perilously unsafe boats across the English Channel from France to England was a major issue during last July’s general election, which brought Starmer’s Labour Party to power.

The government said Monday that nearly 19,000 failed asylum seekers, foreign criminals and other immigration offenders had been expelled from Britain since the election “following a major escalation in immigration enforcement by the Home Office”.

The ministry said it was the highest number of such returns since 2018.

– Far-right pressure –

Regular migration, currently running at historically high levels and estimated at 728,000 for the year to June 2024, was also a hot button issue in last year’s vote.

Starmer is under pressure to reduce both legal and undocumented migration to fend off growing support for the anti-immigration Reform UK party of Nigel Farage, which won roughly four million votes during the July 4 elections — an unprecedented haul for a far-right party.

Around 36,816 people were detected in the Channel last year, a 25 percent increase from the 29,437 who arrived in 2023, according to provisional figures from the interior ministry.

As part of his plan to reduce undocumented migration, Starmer has also set up a new Border Security Command and strengthened cooperation with European partners, including Europol.

Britain has signed joint action plans with Germany and Iraq aimed at tackling the smuggling gangs, which build on agreements signed under the previous Conservative government, including with France and Albania.

The government also points to an increase in the return of irregular migrants to their countries of origin, the highest since 2017.

Its new Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill, designed to give law enforcement officials “counter-terror style powers” to break up gangs bringing irregular migrants across the Channel, is due to get its second reading in parliament on Monday.