Swedish police have expressed outrage after details emerged that three illegal migrants from Uzbekistan were given cleaning jobs within the secure areas of Stockholm’s Arlanda airport.
The three illegal migrants were employed as cleaners for the police at the airport and were able to move freely back and forth from the secured areas of the airport. This week, after preliminary investigations, the police found that none of the three migrants had valid work or residency papers, Expressen reports.
The investigation came after several officers at the airport claimed they could not speak with the cleaners and that the three individuals were not doing the proper work. It was later discovered that only one of the migrants had a work permit that had expired in 2017, while the other two had no papers at all.
“The fact that three people who are in the country illegally were able to move around here freely is completely mad,” one police officer told the paper, adding: “I’m getting scared. Imagine if they left something inside the premises or photographed things.”
The case is similar to the background of Stockholm radical Islamic terrorist Rakhmat Akilov, also a failed asylum seeker from Uzbekistan, who also worked at a cleaning company, which was suspected of financing terrorism.
The case comes after the European Union reported that Sweden had the worst border control among any member-state of the political bloc, arguing that border officers had poor training and rarely checked for returning jihadists.
According to the Swedish border police, more and more companies are now employing illegal migrant labour after officers in Jämtland County found at least 40 cases of companies hiring illegal migrants within the last two years alone.
“Today we have many people who are expelled from Sweden who do not leave but go underground. And in order to survive, they work virtually for free in exchange for food,” said Kristina Molin, an investigator at the border police in Östersund.