Immigration agents keep eye on transit passengers involved in human smuggling
Immigration agents at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) have been ordered to keep an eye on foreigners arriving as transit passengers following the recent foiled attempts by a syndicate to smuggle illegal aliens to the United Kingdom using Manila as a jump off point.
Bureau of Immigration (BI) Commissioner Jaime Morente said he issued the alert order to thwart further attempts by the human smuggling syndicate to use the NAIA as a base for their operations.
“We should not allow these syndicates to profit from their racket to the detriment of our nation’s prestige,” Morente said, adding that “such nefarious activities, if not checked, could embarrass our country before the international community.”
Morente also commended the immigration officers for their competence, diligence and dedication as gatekeepers of our country. Morente further lauded the heightened capability of immigration officers to detect fraudulent documents saying, “we are starting to reap the fruits of our continuous training and deployment of seasoned officers in our borders”.
In compliance with Morente’s directive, BI port operations division chief Marc Red Mariñas instructed members of the bureau’s border control and intelligence unit (BCIU) to assign undercover agents who will monitor all arriving foreign transit passengers.
Mariñas said the BCIU personnel were also told to closely scrutinize the travel papers of all transit passengers before they are escorted to the departure gate and made to board connecting flights to their final destinations.
As standard operating procedure, aliens transiting at the NAIA are escorted by BCIU personnel to the boarding gates where they are turned over to the concerned airlines of their connecting flight.
The BI-POD reported that since Nov. 25 a total of five foreign transit passengers were already intercepted by BI agents at the NAIA for involvement in human smuggling.
“They were all found in possession of spurious travel documents which they intended to use in gaining illegal entry to the UK,” Mariñas said.