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Nearly 30,000 foreigners arrested in Britain over the past year turned out to have police records in their own country.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the growing influx of criminals – including murderers and rapists – crossing our borders with ease.

Because a Sunday Mirror investigation can reveal that out of a shocking total of 190,000 foreign nationals arrested here in the last 12 months fewer than HALF had their homeland backgrounds checked by our police forces.

The frightening figures from criminal records office ACRO emerge in the wake of a series of terrifying crimes carried out by migrant offenders who have hidden their past from British authorities.

They include the murder of London schoolgirl Alice Gross 10 months ago.

Police believe she was killed by Arnis Zalkalns, an immigrant who managed to enter Britain despite being convicted of murdering his wife back in his native Lithuania.

He was found hanged shortly after Alice’s naked body was discovered in a West London river.

And Labour’s Shadow Immigration Minister David Hanson vowed to raise the ACRO figures with Home Secretary Theresa May.

He said: “It’s vital for public safety that the Government can stop the entry into the UK of foreign nationals who have serious criminal convictions.”

And leading UK criminal justice expert Harry Fletcher, former boss of probation officers’ union NAPO, warned: “The checks at the moment are woefully inadequate.

"The only way we even know a convicted foreign criminal has entered this country is if they are picked up for another offence that has taken place here. That can’t be allowed to continue.”

The data from ACRO, part of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, shows a total of 86,667 requests for overseas ­criminal records checks were made by UK forces.

The records office estimates in a THIRD of these cases the check came back with a criminal conviction – meaning 28,600 of the suspects had already been convicted abroad.

But the true figure will be higher as forces only bothered to check 46 per cent of the 190,000 foreigners held in the UK in 2014.

That total was 12,000 higher than the number of foreigners arrested in 2013 – which means over the past two years 368,000 foreign suspects have been held over crimes in Britain.

We can also reveal more than 10,500 of the 86,000 people behind bars in the UK are offenders from overseas.

And the National Audit Office says the overall cost of dealing with foreign national criminals and suspects is around £850million a year.

The foreigners in jail include five Poles given 10 years each for beating a man to death in Doncaster.

It emerged three of them – Mateusz Halabura, Jaroslaw Owczarczyk and Rafal Palinksi – did time in their homeland for violent attacks.

In another case four Polish criminals savagely beat law professor Paul Koehler during a raid on his home in Wimbledon last August.

They got up to 19 years each in January and Mr Koehler needed at least six operations to rebuild his face.

Foreign criminals 368,000 Foreign suspects 10,500 Overseas offenders £850m Home Office cost

More than 2,500 banged up here are from old Eastern Bloc nations now part of the EU.

They include Romanian Adrian Udrea who burst into an 81-year-old woman’s home in Felixstowe, Suffolk, then raped and robbed her.

Udrea did time for theft before moving to the UK. He got 16 years.

Meanwhile, concerns remain high over the lack of criminal checks on EU nationals BEFORE they enter Britain.

Two months ago the UK joined a £360million EU-wide database but it is already under review. The Schengen Information System – known as SIS II – raises alerts about suspects wanted on European Arrest Warrants.

But it fails to provide warnings on violent offenders released from jail and heading to the UK, because of a lack of ­information supplied by some countries.

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Mr Fletcher, now director of the Digital Trust which monitors online crime, said: “There has to be a change whereby there is a duty on the foreign offenders themselves to report their offending history to immigration when they move around.

“If they fail to declare serious offences, then that should become an offence.

“And this must be backed up by an EU directive where every country tells all the others when a serious offender leaves their borders.

"Data can be sent from one place to another in a millisecond. You could have an instant alert.”

ACRO chief Ian Readhead claimed background checks were helping tackle the problem.

He said: “All European nationals arrested can have their details automatically sent to their country of origin to check if they have convictions.

"This will bring more offenders to justice and keep our communities safe.”