SANDAKAN: A total of 641 illegal immigrants from the Philippines were deported to their homeland via Sandakan Port to Zamboanga, yesterday.
Some of the illegal immigrants boarding a bus from TDS Sandakan to Sandakan Port for the trip back to their home country.
According to the director of the Federal Special Task Force (Sabah/ Labuan), Rodzi Bin Md Saad, it was the biggest deportation to have been carried out at a time whereby it consisted of 293 men, 188 women and 160 children.
“From the total, 463 illegal immigrants were from the Temporary Detention Center (TDS) Sandakan while 178 were from TDS Papar.
“They are between one month to 75 years old, and had been detained at several locations around the state in June,” he said during a press conference at Sandakan TDS, yesterday.
Rodzi, who is also the secretary of the National Security Council, said the group deported yesterday were those who had been detained under the Immigration Act 1959/1963 (revised 2002) during operations carried out by the Federal Special Task Force (Sabah/ Labuan), the Immigration Department, ESSCom, police and Malaysia Maritime Enforcement Agency.
For the record, a total of 12,000 illegal immigrants had been deported to their homelands from January to 15 August, consisting of 9,368 from the Philippines, 2,569 (Indonesia), 95 (Pakistan), 11 (India), 18 (Turkey), 31(China), two(Thailand) and one each from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Nepal, Uzbakistan and the Netherlands.
“This deportation is one of the government efforts to seriously curb the illegal immigrants issue in the state.
“The remaining illegal immigrants detained in several TDS around Sabah are 3,588, whereby 1,724 people are in TDS Papar, 376 in TDS Sandakan and 458 in TDS Tawau,” Rodzi said.
“We hope some 4,000 illegal immigrants will be deported to their homeland by the end of this year to give space for new detainees,” he added.
The Temporary Detention Centers in Sabah can only accommodate a total 5,550 detainees at a time. However, the reconstruction of TDS Menggatal that is expected to be completed soon, can accommodate some 2,500 more detainees.
The construction of four additional building blocks for TDS Sandakan, can accommodate 1,000 more detainees upon completion.