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On a nondescript Medway housing estate a police battering ram shatters the still morning air.
It is just after dawn as officers force entry to the flat on St Mary's Island, hoping to find their targets quietly tucked up in bed - they are not disappointed.
The apartment is at the centre of a long-running investigation into a suspected international gang said to have made hundreds of thousands of pounds smuggling migrants into the UK.
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Some migrants pay thousands for the chance of a better life, travelling from as far away as Vietnam, or being picked up from the camps around Calais.
The future for many lies in brothels or fruit fields where they will work to pay off an exorbitant debt to people traffickers, a debt they can never hope to clear.
Detective Inspector Gary Scarfe said: "A lot of these people are put into domestic servitude or sexually exploited. It's modern day slavery.
"Places like car washes and nail bars - those are the sorts of places where we are doing visits with immigration teams and finding victims that have been put to work there."
The gang's involvement doesn't stop at people trafficking.
By providing employees to businesses who don't ask too many questions, and offering to pay them directly, DI Scarfe said gangs can funnel earnings into their own pockets, leaving the trafficked migrants working as slaves.
Watch: How the raid unfolded
"The gangs make a lot of money transporting the victims into the UK, and then when they are put to work, the money they earn goes back to the organised crime network," said DI Scarfe.
"The victims' families see nothing."
Linguistic and cultural barriers mean victims are unlikely to seek help directly, despite many living in appalling conditions.
"Often they are groomed before they get here, and told English police are corrupt.
"They are told if you talk to the police, they will treat your family roughly back home and they shouldn't trust police.
"It's trying to break those barriers down, to reassure victims we are here to protect them."
In some cases, the situations migrants are fleeing are so grim that almost anything is preferable, making them even less likely to seek help for fear of deportation.
DI Scarfe said: "For some, living in a shared house on a mattress and being paid in cigarettes is a better lifestyle than they had back home.
"So they don't come to us. It's trying to make the victim understand that you shouldn't be treated as a slave, and you've got the right, like every immigrant across the world, to be treated humanely."
The unwillingness of victims to come forward means police rely on members of the public alerting them to suspicious activity.
This latest series of raids is the culmination of work that started last year when a suspected brothel was reported in Gravesend.
The trail led police to a suspected people trafficking gang based in Romania, with a number of links to Medway.
Despite a network stretching through Europe and into Asia, it's claimed the gang pays British-born van drivers thousands of pounds to make the final leg of the trip in order to arouse the least suspicion at the border.
Though some are caught, many others pass undetected through the ports, their human cargo hidden underneath piles of tyres or mattresses in the back of hired vans.
"English drivers are paid extraordinary amounts of money to drive them across, and over the last 12 months we've been working with the UK Border Agency to identify these vehicles and get them stopped," said DI Scarfe.
Adult migrants discovered entering the UK illegally are taken to immigration centers, while children are looked after by social services.
But those who do not get caught at the border can face an even more uncertain future at the hands of the people traffickers.
DI Scarfe said: "They are hidden crimes. They have been well embedded in the UK for a number of years and it's only in the last two years we've started to realise how these organised crime networks are working, and how we can stop them."
Police arrested eight people in the latest series of raids, and the following people have been charged with 'conspiring to do an act to facilitate the commission of a breach of UK immigration law, by a non EU person between May 1, 2015 and December 31, 2015.’
A 37-year-old man from Gillingham and a 22-year-old woman from Chatham were also arrested and have been bailed, pending further enquiries, until May 17 and June 21, respectively.
