The Bureau of Immigration barred more than 2,300 foreign nationals from entering the country during the first six months of the year as a result of the agency’s intensified efforts to thwart the entry of aliens whose presence here are deemed inimical to public welfare and safety.
BI port operations division chief Grifton Medina said 2,351 aliens of various nationalities were denied entry in the different ports.
He said that 1,920 of the aliens were turned away at Manila’s Ninoy Aquino International Airport while the rest were stopped at the airports in Mactan, Clark, Kalibo, Aklan and Davao.
“They were turned back after undergoing primary and secondary inspection by our immigration officers and were declared unfit for admission into our country for a variety of reasons. They were issued exclusion orders and booked on the first available flight to their ports of origin,” Medina said.
At the same time, the BI said it would file charges against people behind the online article for circulating “fake news” alleging massive corruption at the BI Warden Facility in Taguig, claiming that jailed foreigners can be freed for certain amount.
Immigration Commissioner Jaime Morente said the article, which was posted in 2014, was an old issue and no immigration officials were interviewed by a group that admitted any corruption activities at the BIWF.
“Posted in 2014, the article recently made rounds again on social media for reportedly exposing illegal activities in the detention center,” Morente said.
The BI said it would seek the help of the National Bureau of Investigation to investigate the fake news online and to charge people responsible for circulating it on the social media.
In the Facebook post, a netizen claimed to have interviewed BI’s Chief Legal Arvin Santos about a corrupt syndicate of prosecutors in the Department of Justice and the BI.
According to said post, BI and DOJ prosecutors are conniving to get pay offs from foreign detainees before granting them bail.
Santos, who has been quoted in the fake interview allegedly written by a member of a pseudo-organization of detainees at the BIWF, has vehemently denied issuing any statements on allegations of corruption, including extortion activities committed by Immigration jail guards against detained foreigners.
Santos stressed that he was never interviewed by any member or representative of the organization.
“I was never interviewed and I never made such statements,” said Santos. “This is a 5-year old fake article that was revived by a group with malicious intent. The spread of fake news is a criminal act, and the public must report it to the social media administrators for it to be taken down,” he added.
“Our detention center has CCTV cameras that can be remotely viewed from our national operations center here at the main office. We are closely monitoring their activities, and with a click of a button, I can instantly see what they are doing at any time of the day,” Morente said.
Morente said that they suspect that the resurgence of the article comes from disgruntled detainees, saying “these deportable aliens want first class, five star accommodation while being detained for immigration offenses.
“The detention center is not a hotel, but it is decent, and has the basic needs,” he said.