Eleven people have been arrested as part of a Garda investigation into sham marriages and immigration issues.
Operation Vantage was set up in August by the Garda National Immigration Bureau to investigate illegal immigration and identify marriages of convenience.
Forty two searches have been carried out in Dublin, Kildare, Meath, Longford, Louth, Cork, Limerick and Mayo today involving over 200 Gardai.
Cash, a stun gun, computers, memory devices, phones and documents were seized.
Detective Superintendent Stephen Courage from the Garda National Immigration Bureau said the documents seized would be used to build up fake profiles:
"False payslips, false UPC bills, tenancy agreements, false marriage certs. The role of the facilitator and those who were subject of the search today would be to produce these documents and create a history because without this history, you cannot exercise your EU Treaty rights".
Gardai believe over one thousand sham marriages have taken place in Ireland, with grooms coming over from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Mauritius, paying between €10,000 and €20,000, to be paired with a bride from Eastern Europe or Portugal.
Detective Superintendent Courage says the brides, who come from poorer backgrounds in their home countries, are brought into Ireland a number of times:
"The first would be to get a PPS number. The second would be to attend an interview with the Registrar before the ceremony took place".
"The third time the girl would be brought into the country would be for the wedding ceremony itself and then finally she would come in to fill out the forms necessary for her 'husband' to obtain EU rights".
He added that they are investigating suspected marriages of convenience and if they find evidence of that, and someone obtained their EU rights fraudulently, then they will recommend to the Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald that those rights will be revoked.
