The hidden underbelly of Wales where exploitation is rife

North Wales Live

3 hours ago

Frantic shouting in Mandarin erupts from behind a curtain separating the front desk from the kitchen at the Red Hot Goodies Chinese takeaway. Waiting customers are turned away.
Upstairs is a modest, cramped flat which is searched by five officers clad in stab vests emblazoned with "'Immigration Enforcement". They swiftly locate each individual in the building, including one who was evidently serving customers moments before. The takeaway in Blackwood, Gwent, is shut down for the evening.
The suspected illegal worker, a Chinese woman who only provides her first name and denies working at the takeaway despite being spotted behind the till, is not the person the officers are seeking. She is detained nonetheless. It emerges the young woman, a former marketing student who arrived in the Caerphilly town two months earlier, had entered the UK legally on a skilled worker's visa.
She is performing what is considered unskilled work by assisting behind the till at the takeaway. Her stay is therefore unlawful and she is informed she will have to depart the UK as soon as possible.
The unassuming takeaway operates on a quiet residential street. Its young male owner informs officer Richard Johnson, who's leading the raids, that the woman chanced upon his family online.
He claims he has never paid her, showing the officers the company's bank statements. These reveal the woman is paying him £280 a month to live in the flat upstairs with the family.
Attempting to ignore the owner's mother, who persistently yells over the officers in Mandarin, they ascertain she's essentially receiving reduced rent in exchange for her work. Join the North Wales Live WhatsApp community group where you can get the latest stories delivered straight to your phone
The proprietor insists he knows nothing about the woman beyond her name, age, and the validity of her passport, reports Wales Online.
Richard asks: "The only reason she came here was to help you in this shop?" The owner responds: "I think she was homeless and had nowhere to go." Richard questions: "Why did you think she was homeless?" "I just took a guess," he answers.
It transpires the takeaway has previously been penalised for employing an illegal worker. The owner is issued a referral notice and warned he could face another potential fine of up to £60,000.
Penalties now stand at £45,000 for a first-time offence and can rise to £60,000 for subsequent offences. Once a notice is issued, it is handled by a central immigration office in Manchester which conducts further investigations and determines the appropriate penalty.
The young woman provides evidence that she has arranged a flight back to China for the following week and assures the officers she will leave the country. As we exit the takeaway, Richard explains the background. "You get people who've come over on small boats and in the back of lorries or in through the backdoor through Ireland," he says. "But often the people we're dealing with have entered the country legally but then they breach the terms of their visa.
"That woman 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."
Richard continued: "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."
Just hours before arriving at the Chinese takeaway, the officers visited the Bella e Buona Italian restaurant in Brynmawr. During their previous two surprise visits to the restaurant, they had discovered Albanian illegal workers in the kitchen – some of whom fled when the officers arrived.
With the threat of closure hanging over the restaurant, this time there were no illegal workers to be found. "It seems they've learned their lesson," said Richard before heading to his next assignment in Cardiff.
Over the past week Richard, from Port Talbot, and his Wales and west of England immigration enforcement team have been busy busting illegal workers across various sites.
Their crackdowns ranged from a Tenby construction site, where five illegal workers were detained, to Treforest's Choices Express takeaway, leading to a Sri Lankan man's arrest. At a Premier Stores in Pontypridd, an Indian man was detained for violating immigration bail.
It's part of a clear trend. Between July 5 last year, and May 31, 2025, the Wales and west of England squad arrested 1,057 illegal workers, up an astounding 114% on the previous year. The number of visits was up too, by 96% to 1,477, matching a surge in illegal migrant landings in the UK.
During a January operation at a dairy farm in Llangedwyn, Powys, six Romanians were arrested for visa infractions. Another visit to a solar farm in Anglesey on March 20 led to 16 arrests and a referral notice being served on the subcontractor.
Particular focus has been on tackling employers who facilitate illegal working, often subjecting migrants to squalid conditions and illegal working hours below minimum wage. Restaurants, nail bars and construction sites have been among the hundreds of businesses targeted.
"In the last financial year we arrested more illegal workers than any immigration enforcement team in the country," Richard revealed. "In the first eight weeks of this financial year we've done more than double the arrests than the same period last year. So we're looking at well over 2,000 (arrests) if we keep on the same trajectory."
Is that a positive development or a cause for concern? "It depends which way you look at it I suppose," said Richard." I think at least it shows our commitment to prioritise and target illegal working."
A recent raid on a distribution centre uncovered so many undocumented workers that it overwhelmed a computer system used by officers known as Pronto. For each individual case, the system logs details such as name, date of birth, arrival date in the UK, visa information, contact information, any mitigating circumstances, and what the employer has told visiting officers.
Richard observed that the nature of the job is becoming much less predictable. "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, who has a 25-year tenure in immigration enforcement, shed light on the devastating reality for many who are led to the UK by people smugglers with false promises of an improved life with ample opportunities. Instead, they often find themselves in deplorable living conditions, earning scant wages for long, harsh hours under the perpetual risk of arrest and expulsion.
"A lot of them, I think, see a better future than is the reality when they get here," said Richard. Hopeful migrants often pay hefty sums for transport, sometimes up to £10,000, which they then strive to repay only to encounter bitter disappointment.
"There are often some really sad cases," he said. "We went to a brothel and encountered three Brazilian sex workers. 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 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 now been alerted by a local tip-off that another Chinese takeaway in Caerphilly borough may have illegal workers. Upon visiting the establishment, the officers encounter a visibly distressed family of five.
The father, who runs the takeaway, struggles to find his words initially and invites the officers to check every corner of the premises, hastily asserting, "No-one is hiding here." Sign up for the North Wales Live newsletter sent twice daily to your inbox
During my time with the enforcement team, I've noticed their consistent calmness and respectfulness on these operations. Quickly realising that no laws are being broken, they offer their apologies and depart from the property. "That one is most likely a malicious report," Richard remarks.
When asked what he means, he explains: "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.
"If 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."
He said officers often receive valuable information via anonymous tips by the public. "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 said.
"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 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."