PSC is a new department that deals with areas of work such as major crime, public protection and serious and organised crime.

The department is headed by Detective Chief Superintendent Dean Smith, who said: "The Protective Services Command exists to co-ordinate operations and investigations like this alongside national agencies. This has been a major undertaking for us and the results today speak for themselves."

The raids were helped by Op Rebutia – The East Midlands Foreign National Crime Team.

East Midlands-wide teams to catch foreign criminals were launched earlier this year, bringing together police and immigration officers to tackle immigration crime.

The five regional police forces - Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire and Nottinghamshire - have come together with the UK Border Agency to form Foreign National Crime teams to track down, arrest and remove foreign criminals across the region.

The key objective of the foreign national crime teams is to prioritise enforcement activity against foreign nationals, whether in the UK legally or illegally, causing harm in our society by committing serious crimes or involved in activities such as terrorism, controlled drugs, human trafficking and other aspects of organised immigration crime.

The Gangmasters Licensing Authority has been involved in the raids.

It was set up to safeguard the welfare and interests of vulnerable workers whilst ensuring that gangmasters who supply workers to agriculture, horticulture, shellfish gathering and food processing and packaging operate within the law.

The GLA has already revoked the licences of 77 rogue gangmasters and can prosecute those operating without a licence and those using an unlicensed gangmaster.

The Serious Organised Crime Agency was also involved.

It is an intelligence-led agency formed in April 2006 to tackle Class A drugs and organised immigration crime as top priorities. Other priorities are fraud against individuals and the private sector, hi tech crime, counterfeiting, firearms, serious robbery and recovery of the proceeds of crime.

The UK Human Trafficking Centre has helped with the operation.

Originally set up following Operation Pentameter one in 2006, the UKHTC has expanded it's staff and scale of work in tackling the trafficking of buman beings.

The UKHTC maintains its fives strands of business development, continuing to identify better ways of sharing intelligence, better ways of caring for victims of human trafficking and training law enforcement agencies in investigation techniques amongst other pieces of work.

In addition to this, the Blue Blindfold campaign has become a prominent fixture in raising awareness about human trafficking.

Full story and pictures in Wednesday's Evening Telegraph