The Home Office is deploying up to 800 extra enforcement officers across the UK in a bid to boost immigration controls, it was announced yesterday.
More than half of the enforcement recruits will be police officers on secondment to the Immigration and Nationality Directorate (IND), home secretary John Reid said.
The additional staff will support the government's crack down on organised crime gangs involved in illegal immigration.
The new enforcement teams will be rolled out early next year, the Financial Times reports.
The recruitment drive is part of Reid's IND reform, announced in July of this year, "to make the UK immigration system more effective".
The Home Office insisted that the move would not have a negative impact on front-line police security.