Airport and immigration authorities at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport barred an African national from entering the country for using spurious travel documents.
Clarisse Nankia, 43, a Cameroonian, disguised herself as a Guatemalan national upon arrival aboard an Ethiopian Airlines flight from Addis Ababa.
NAIA immigration officer Marc Red Mariñas said Nankia was immediately excluded and booked on the first available flight back to her port of origin after immigration officers discovered that the Guatemalan passport and other travel documents she presented were “fraudulent.”
Immigration personnel manning Terminal 1 doubted Nankia´s identity when she could not converse in Spanish, the official language in Guatemala. Her passport was likewise unreadable by the passport scanners.
Airports officials eventually determined that the passenger presented a fake Guatemalan passport and a Guatemalan identity card, which were both declared as fraudulent by immigration´s forensic document laboratory.
Immigration Commissioner Jaime Morente reiterated his earlier warnings against illegal aliens attempting to enter the country.
“Our officers are highly trained, and we have high-tech equipment that can detect fake documents. Do not even attempt to use illegal means to enter the Philippines,” he said.
Airport authorities recently installed high-tech cameras in each immigration counter at the NAIA to capture images of all departing and arriving passengers in line with the heightened security measure being enforced at the airport.
The measure covers all local and foreign passengers, as well as international ine pilots and crews.
“She was immediately excluded and booked on the first available flight back to her port of origin after our immigration officers found that the Guatemalan passport and other travel documents she presented are fraudulent,” OIC deputy commissioner and BI Port Operations Division Mariñas said.
The immigration officer reportedly doubted her identity when she could not speak in Spanish, the official language in Guatemala.
Her passport was likewise unreadable by their passport scanners, the BI official said.
For his part, immigration commissioner Jaime Morente reiterated his warnings against illegal aliens attempting to enter the country.
“Our officers are highly trained, and we have high tech equipment that can detect fake documents,” he said. “Do not even attempt to use illegal means to enter the Philippines,” he warned.