She had something old, something new, something borrowed... and a man in blue.

This is the moment that a newlywed bride was arrested, still wearing her wedding dress and minutes after exchanging vows with her new husband, as part of a crackdown on suspected illegal immigrants.

Police stopped the car as the 21-year-old Portuguese woman was being driven away from a church service in Dulwich, South London, and arrested her on suspicion of helping an illegal immigrant to enter Britain.

Her smartly dressed new husband, a 37-year-old Nigerian, who arrived at the scene soon afterwards in a separate car, was also arrested. He was in custody last night and faces deportation.

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A police source said: “We couldn’t work it out when we found them. Why she wasn’t with her husband?

“She was wearing the dress but he wasn’t the groom, and it turned out they didn’t even leave the church together.”

The arrests, which took place on September 17, followed a joint operation between the Metropolitan Police and UK Border Agency investigators.

A Ford Mondeo was stopped near Crystal Palace Park after being flagged up on the police’s automatic numberplate recognition system, and the tearful bride was ordered out of the vehicle.

She and her groom, who had been living at different addresses in Southwark, South London, were driven to Bromley police station in separate marked police cars.

The unnamed bride was bailed later until November 6 on suspicion of facilitating the entry of an illegal immigrant into Britain, a Metropolitan Police spokesman said.

“The 37-year-old Nigerian groom was handed over to officers from the UK Border Agency and remains in custody while officers work to remove him from the UK,” he added.

Police said the arrests led officers to search an address in Sydenham, South London, where numerous passports were found with the same photograph but bearing different names.

Two other men, Kazeem Fasanya and Adey Senaike, were arrested subsequently. Last week Fasayana was jailed for 14 months by Croydon Magistrates’ Court after pleading guilty to possessing a false passport. Senaike was sentenced to six months for possessing a passport containing false Home Office stamps.

Suspected sham marriages have fallen dramatically after a crackdown instigated by David Blunkett, then the Home Secretary, in 2004.

New legislation requires people not settled legally in Britain to seek written permission in the form of a “certificate of approval” if they wish to marry. There were only 400 suspected cases last year, down from 3,500 in 2004, according to Home Office figures.

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