A POLITICIAN insists claims she made about illegal immigrants were accurate despite Sussex Police - who she quoted as a source - suggesting otherwise.

MEP Jane Collins told the UKIP Spring conference “hundreds of illegal immigrants” were arriving in the UK every week only for Border Force officers to “let them go”.

She cited a Sussex Police arrest of five Iranian men off the coast of Winchelsea who were spotted by a bird watcher and reported to police.

She has come under fire for her comments with many demanding she back them up with evidence.

It came as the force reportedly suggested it had “no record” of the information she was attributing her speech to.

Critics claimed she had inaccurately quoted an Argus report about the topic.

A UKIP spokeswoman said yesterday Ms Collins stood by her comments and had not referred to an Argus article but has made an official complaint about national newspaper coverage of the subject.

Ms Collins said: “There is no official statistic for the number of illegal immigrants who enter the UK by virtue of the fact they are illegal and many are not detected.

“But if we extrapolate the numbers we do have, such as the 1.1 million illegal immigrants living in the UK as calculated by MigrationWatch or the answer to the BBC’s Freedom of Information Act request which used the data from 39 police forces who returned information on the number of ‘arrests for illegal entry’ into the UK which were 2,7800 in 169 weeks and the 145,157 intercepted by officials in France, it is entirely legitimate to assume more than 165 people entered the country illegally on average each week.

"Especially given there are a large number of people estimated by the authorities to be living here illegally, demonstrating large numbers are not caught.”

A force spokesman said: “[In April 2016] Chief Inspector Phil Nicholas said in an interview with The Argus his officers had stopped 119 illegal immigrants in the past six months.

"A search of logged incidents for the last 60 days up to February 18 shows no reports of illegal immigrants being stopped by road policing officers.”