Airport immigration and ‘Pastillas scheme Part 2’

ONCE again, the Bureau of Immigration has come under intense scrutiny. An exposé in the Senate has revealed that illegally recruited Filipinos who eventually ended up as crypto-scammers in Myanmar were spirited out of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport, apparently with the help of airport immigration personnel.

Sen. Ana Theresia “Risa” Hontiveros has been providing details of the outbound trafficking of Filipino workers during the hearings of the Senate committee on women, children, family relations and gender equality, which she heads.

Hontiveros presented a man who said he was told by his recruiter that he would be working at a telemarketing company in Thailand. After a circuitous journey, he found himself at the Shwe Kokko Special Economic Zone in Myanmar, where he was forced to work as an online scammer.

Shwe Kokko, which has earned notoriety as a “scam city,” is a $15-billion industrial and entertainment complex developed by a group of transnational Chinese investors that was reportedly evicted from neighboring Cambodia for illegal gambling activities.

The Shwe Kokko has been described as a money-laundering hub run by a Chinese mafia. Its ill repute is such that the Chinese government was prompted to declare that Shwe Kokko had “nothing to do” with its Belt and Road Initiative.

Hontiveros said that 12 Filipinos who worked as virtual slaves at Shwe Kokko have been rescued by a network of nongovernmental organizations, and are now in Thailand.

The workers said they were severely punished for not meeting their quota to lure professionals into questionable crypto investments.

One of them said breaking the rules means confinement in a black room that serves as a dungeon. They were also made to lift brick stones for hours. “If you don’t get whipped, you will be electrocuted. After the brick stone comes down you will be made to run. If you run slowly they throw a basketball at you,” the victim described his ordeal in Filipino.

Hontiveros strongly suspects that the Shwe Kokko mafia has contacts in the Bureau of Immigration that handle the Philippine end of the trafficking network.

One of the two victims who testified at the Senate hearing said his recruiter provided him with a fake pass identifying him as an airport concessionaire employee. That enabled him to skip the immigration line. He also had an “escort” who waived off other boarding procedures.

The man said P30,000 would be deducted from his initial salary as the immigration officers’ kickback.

The victim identified the Immigration official who was his escort as Laisa Magallanes. BI Commissioner Norman Tansingco, who attended the hearings, said there is “confirmation from our personnel section that Laisa Magallanes is not a member of the Bureau of Immigration.”

Tansingco instead blamed airport security for issuing the fake pass to the trafficking victim.

Inside help

But in a statement, the Manila International Airport Authority refused to accept responsibility for the fake passes.

It said that in the past three months, its security guards foiled attempts of four passengers posing as employees of an airport concessionaire, “to leave the country bypassing immigration formalities.”

Hontiveros is far from convinced that the Chinese mafia is running the trafficking operation without inside help at NAIA.

“The plot gets thicker. And not only does the plot thicken, it looks like we have heard this plot before. Feels like I have déjà vu,” Hontiveros said.

“It seems that the Chinese mafia syndicate is not the only one to blame here, although they are the main villain, there are also immigration employees involved. It’s like Pastillas Part 2, but worse and more intense,” she said.

In 2020, Hontiveros unearthed the infamous pastillas scheme, in which immigration officers were bribed to allow Chinese nationals hired by Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators, or POGOs, entry into the country.

Instead of blame-tossing, airport authorities should launch a serious campaign to cleanse their ranks of undesirable elements. They must be reminded that human trafficking is, as the US Department of State aptly puts it, “a grave crime and a human rights abuse” that “compromises national and economic security, undermines the rule of law, and harms the well-being of individuals and communities everywhere.”