7 ‘trafficking’ victims rescued

by Vito Barcelo, Manila Standard, 11 Oct 2019

Seven suspected victims of human trafficking were rescued by immigration officers at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport after they were intercepted for possessing spurious travel documents.

“These fraud syndicates continue to ignore our warnings. There will be no letup in our campaign against human trafficking and their victims will not be allowed to leave if they are caught,” Immigration Commissioner Jaime Morente said.

Morente issued the statement after the seven passengers were stopped from leaving the country in three separate instances at Terminals 3 and 1 of the NAIA.

The five passengers pretended to be tourists in attempting to leave for Malaysia.

“They admitted paying their recruiters fees ranging from P125,000 to P175,000 each in exchange for processing their jobs and travel papers to Australia, which was their final destination,” according to BI port operations division chief Grifton Medina.

The passengers were reportedly accompanied by a woman who was also stopped due to a pending court cases of estafa and illegal recruitment.

“They also presented fraudulently manufactured employee IDs which were given to them by their handlers to make it appear that they are gainfully employed here and are thus legitimate tourists,” Medina added.

Earlier, the BI’s travel control and enforcement unit reported that a Malaysia-bound woman was intercepted also at NAIA 3 for having a spurious United Kingdom visa and tampered pages on her passport.

“We also discovered that she was already previously barred from leaving the country on suspicion of being a tourist worker,” BI-TCEU chief Timotea Barizo said.

TCEU members also stopped from leaving an underage overseas Filipino worker who misrepresented her age by falsifying her date of birth.

All seven passengers were turned over to the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking for assistance and further investigation.