Immigration officers and police raided a bakery in a clamp-down on overseas workers using forged ID.

Seventeen Brazilian nationals were arrested in the raid on Fortes Bakery, Victoria Road, Burgess Hill, which happened at about 11am yesterday.

The workers were loaded into six Ford Galaxy people carriers and taken off to Chichester police station for questioning.

Company chairman Vic Forte said the workers pretended they were from an EU country to get employment.

He said: "We thought they were Portuguese but it turns out they were from Brazil.

"They used forged identity cards and they have basically been lying about their nationality.

"Everyone is pretty traumatised.

"A lot of the staff are upset because they were friends with them.

"From our point of view, no one has done us any favours, even though we treated the workers very well."

The company, which employs about 60 people, paid the workers £5 to £5.50 per hour.

Mr Forte said the company was fooled by convincing copies of identity papers. He said: "These particular people were relatives of other people who work here.

"The relatives were originally recruited from an employment agency.

"We carry out thorough legal checks but there's nothing you can do about it.

"They all had National Insurance cards, too.

"We have been in business since 1965 and nothing like this has ever happened before."

A spokesman for the Home Office said similar raids were taking place in Sussex on a daily basis.

He was unable to confirm how many people were working with false identity cards.

He said: "It is a problem but not a massive one."

David Pither is area manager for Catering and Industrial Personnel, which has in the past supplied Fortes with workers.

He said: "It is almost impossible to stop this happening. It's very difficult to be certain about ID because there can be so many different kinds.

"With more and more countries entering the EU, it's becoming like a paper chase with all the different ID.

"The cards look so good.

"If workers from the EU have ID cards, they can start work immediately."

He said the deaths of 19 suspected illegal immigrants in Morecambe Bay last week had put people on their guard.

The Chinese nationals were harvesting cockles and police suspect they were employed illegally by a criminal organisation.

Mr Pither said: "We need to be even more careful everything is in check, bearing in mind the incident in Morecambe.

"We can never compete with the illegal employers because they pay such low wages."

Mr Forte said the agency often had no choice but to employ workers from overseas.

He said: "We don't know the reason why but the food industry is having problems employing people.

"We try to recruit from the local area where possible but we also use recruits from overseas.

"I don't know if we would be put off in the future, though.

"We don't want this happening again."