Senator Bong Revilla said out of the 30,000 passengers offloaded by the Bureau of Immigration (BI), only 4.2 percent had basis and only 1.45 percent were connected to human trafficking.
“This really says something about the accuracy and efficiency of the Bureau of Immigration,” Revilla said.
According to the BI, of the 32,404 Filipinos offloaded in 2022, only 472 were related to human trafficking, 873 allegedly misrepresented themselves, and 10 were minors.
The latest offloading incident at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) which went viral involved a Filipino passenger bound for Israel.
The woman traveler share on social media her experience with an immigration officer who conducted a lengthy interview which eventually cause the passenger to miss her flight despite being at the airport several hours before the scheduled time of departure.
The traveler also had to shell out additional money to cover rebooking expenses.
According to Revilla, his office has received numerous concerns and complaints about the prevalence of arbitrary offloading at NAIA. Revilla said he was in the process of investigating the matter when the issue blew up. “We are looking at this since last year, and now, it came out,” he said.