FOI 14786-25 - Immigration Arrests

Request:

For each of the last five years including this year so far, how many people were arrested on suspicion of entering the UK illegally?

For each of the last five years including this year so far, how many people arrested on suspicion of entering the UK illegally were released on bail?

For each of the last five years including this year so far, how many people arrested on suspicion of entering the UK illegally failed to answer bail?

Response:

Search for all arrests between 2020 and 30/07/2025 for the following offences:
• Enter United Kingdom in breach of deportation order
• Enter United Kingdom lawfully without leave but remain beyond time limit
• Enter United Kingdom without a passport
• Enter United Kingdom without leave – immigration
• Enter/remain in UK beyond leave time limit
• Fail to observe conditions to enter/remain in United Kingdom
• Immigration - enter/remain in UK beyond time limit
• Knowingly enter the UK without leave
• Seek/obtain leave to enter/remain/ETA in UK by deceptive means - immigration
• Seek/obtain leave to enter/remain in UK by deceptive means - immigration

Question 1:
2020 – 133
2021 – 143
2022 – 100
2023 – 126
2024 – 118
2025 – 48

Question 2 – None

Question 3 – N/A

Many crime codes for entering the UK illegally also include remaining in the UK illegally, and we have no means of reasonably separating these. For this reason, the figures provided above would include, for example, someone who had entered the UK legally on a Visa and subsequently overstayed their Visa.

Please note that the numerical data presented in this response is an unaudited snapshot of unpublished data sourced from "live" systems and is subject to the interpretation of the original request by the individual extracting the data.

Northamptonshire Police systems are designed primarily for the management of individual cases and not for the production of statistical information for Freedom of Information responses.

The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of relevance of data to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures for ad hoc requests may have limitations and this should be taken into account when the data is used.

If you decide to write an article/use the enclosed data, we ask you to take into consideration the factors highlighted in this document so as to not mislead members of the public or official bodies or misrepresent the relevance of the whole or any part of this disclosed material.