FIFTEEN suspected illegal immigrants fled from the back of a parked lorry at a motorway service station last night.
Three of the group were arrested by police at 11pm at Woolley Edge Moto services, along the M1 southbound near Bretton.
The three are believed to be under 18 and from India.
Police are working with the immigration services to find the rest of the stowaways.
The three people who were detained are being questioned at Wood Street police station in Wakefield.
Police said the driver of the lorry, who has not been named, was not arrested.
Woolley Edge is just north of junction 38, one of the M1 turn-offs to Huddersfield.
Geoff Dossetter, spokesman for the Freight Transport Association, said authorities were trying to clamp down on the problem.
"Since December, when the Government introduced compulsory checks in Calais, we have seen quite a reduction in the problem of illegal immigrants," he added.
He went on: "In the vast majority of incidents of this type the driver knows nothing of these illegal passengers. They damage the vehicle and load, destroy his schedule and he can get fined."
The maximum fine can be £4,000 per stowaway.
"You have a benevolent welfare system and an asylum system full of holes," said Mr Dossetter.
"In the transport system over the past five or six years we have suffered enormously. This particular driver has obviously got a massive problem."
He added that the Government had stopped publishing figures of people entering the country illegally.
A Moto spokesman said many of the staff on duty last night did not know of the incident. The company would work alongside the police. This was the first such reported incident at Woolley Edge.
