Seven arrested in London over alleged people smuggling

UK Border Agency officials raided several homes in north and central London at dawn .

Four males and one female aged 23, 23, 29, 38 and 56 were detained in Mill Hill, a 44-year-old man was arrested in Edgware and another 46, was picked up in Kensington.

All were arrested on suspicion of conspiring to facilitate an asylum seeker for gain and are now being questioned at police stations in London.

This followed a joint investigation with the Spanish Guardia Civil into an alleged criminal network suspected of assisting Iranian migrants into the UK from Europe.

The network is alleged to have organised travel and provided false documents to their clients to facilitate their arrival at UK airports.

Co-ordinated action by the Guardia Civil saw eleven people arrested during raids in Madrid and Alicante in Spain.

UK Border Agency's '100,000 Unopened Letters'

UK Border Agency (UKBA) staff dealt with a backlog of immigration cases so inefficiently that at one point 100,000 items of post were unopened

Applications were placed into an archive of unresolved cases after "very minimal work", despite the agency assuring MPs that "exhaustive" checks had been carried out

In March 2011, there were 147,000 unfinished cases that were passed to an audit unit

 In a sample of 135 files examined as part of the inspection, each case had lain dormant for an average of 87 months - more than seven years - before they were reopened in 2010 for consideration.

The shortest period of inactivity was six months - the longest was an astonishing 17 years and nine months.

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