The restaurant and building trades are being targeted in more immigration raids to find illegal workers, Home Secretary James Cleverly said on Tuesday.
It comes as the Home Office announced on Tuesday that it had met a target to clear a backlog of asylum claims, with more than 112,000 cases processed in 2023. Two thirds of applications (67 per cent) subject to an initial decision last year were granted.
Mr Cleverly said there had also been an increase in voluntary and forced returns of people claiming asylum in the last year.
However the Government does not keep detailed records of those who actually leave the UK, he admitted.
"We don't necessarily track people as they leave the country," Mr Cleverly told Times Radio.
"But what we do know is there has been a 66% increase in voluntary returns, this is where basically we've said to people look you're not going to get asylum you should go home.
"There's also been a 67% increase in enforced returns, where we basically sent people back home."
He added: "If they try and slip in to the elicit economy for example, well we significantly increase the raids on illegal working, so ultimately we find these people.
"We go looking at places where we know people work illegally so often in the clothing trade, sometimes in the restaurant trade, in the building trade, we know where these people go and typically work, often cash in hand, often undocumented, we go and find them and we remove them...
"This is working. We are going looking for them. Of course, they're going to try and hide, but we go looking for them and we find them and then we deport them."Opposition MPs argued that the Government should prioritise returning asylum seekers to their countries of origin alongside processing their asylum applications.
Labour's shadow chief secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "The numbers keep changing because the Government changed the timeframe in which they published the numbers to suit their purposes in what is now a general election year.
"We know that there are still eight times more people in the backlog now compared to when Labour was last in government.
"It's not just the processing of the application, it's then returning asylum seekers who don't get granted asylum in the UK. We know that there's around 56,000 of those asylum seekers in the UK that need to go home who are waiting in the UK waiting to be returned.
"So the Government's being slow, not just on processing the applications, but also on returning people home when they've not been granted asylum to stay in the UK."
Asked about the possibility of Labour planning to process applications abroad, Mr Jones said the party "would consider all options that are available to us" and such systems had worked in countries including Ukraine and Hong Kong.
It comes as the Government attempts to clampdown on asylum seekers and reduce the number of people coming to Britain in small boats across the Channel.
He said the ban, which affects all but those enrolling on postgraduate research courses and ones with Government-funded scholarships, will cut migration by tens of thousands.
The measures were announced in May by his ousted predecessor Suella Braverman shortly before official figures showed net migration running at 672,000.
The move could hit universities which rely on foreign student fees and could also harm the UK’s reputation as an international destination, experts have warned.
