SANDAKAN – A total of 358 Filipinos who were in Sabah illegally were repatriated home today.
Sabah Immigration director Datuk Muhamad Sade Amin said that the deportation exercise was conducted with a collaboration between the Immigration Department and the Philippines embassy.
The embassy was represented here by consul Leandro Luiz S. Manantan to help oversee the second mass deportation of undocumented migrants from the Philippines.
The first deportation involved 316 Filipino illegals this year. Thus far, 674 illegal immigrants have been sent home to the Philippines, Sade said.
“All of the Filipino migrants have been detained at the Sandakan immigration depot since 2020 and were sent home to the port at Zamboanga in the Philippines from the Sandakan port,” he said in a statement.
The migrants were also screened for Covid-19 before being sent home to avoid possible spread of the virus, he said.
The repatriation programme is an ongoing Immigration Department exercise to return illegal immigrants in Sabah. – The Vibes, April 16, 2021
