The Immigration Department on Friday said Hong Kong saw a record 335 million arrivals and departures last year, a 12 percent jump from 2024.

Visitor arrivals reached 50 million, which was also a record, with 38 million of them coming from the mainland.

At a year end press conference by the department, director Benson Kwok said 32,000 people were denied entry to the SAR, or around 0.06 percent of the total number of arrivals.

"Among these denials, at least 85 percent of them were people who came here with suspicious intent," he said.

"That includes coming here to work illegally, to overstay or our so-called 'unwelcomed figures'."

Since late 2024, the department has been operating on a pre-arrival registration system for air passengers, but Kwok said it was not suitable to publicise details regarding entry denials for security reasons.

Last year, officers conducted nearly 20,000 operations targeting illegal workers, a rise of 12 percent.

Some 3,700 suspected illegal workers and 570 employers were arrested.

The director said more cyberpatrols had been conducted against cross-boundary illegal workers and that officers would exchange intelligence with their mainland counterparts if the suspects were found to be involved with mainland online platforms.

He added that 28 arrests were made last year in connection with self-employed make-up artists and photographers working without a permit and that officers would conduct more undercover operations to counter this trend.

In the coming quarter, two contactless facial recognition border clearance channels will go on trial for registered Hong Kong residents using the bridge to Macao and Zhuhai, Kwok said.

The system involves the installation of a number of cameras around the channels, with users being able to walk through and spend two seconds less to cross the border compared with traditional e-channels.

"When the system detects abnormality inside a contactless e-channel, for example when there's a mismatch between the number of people inside the channel compared to those successfully identified, the gates will come down automatically," Kwok said.

When this happens, he said immigration officers will arrive to sort out the discrepancy.

Kwok said there was also no timetable yet as to when the reconstructed border facility at the Huanggang checkpoint would come on stream.