From Sabah, 800 Filipino deportees arrived.

 From Sabah, 800 Filipino deportees arrived.

Social welfare officials reported that some eight hundred deportees from Sabah came here on a commercial vessel on Thursday - Philippines: Zamboanga del Sur / Zamboanga City

This is the second round of deportations that Malaysia has carried out this year as part of its ongoing campaign against undocumented immigrants.

Although Malaysian immigration authorities have been conducting a crackdown on a regular basis, the legal conflict with the heirs of the Sultanate of Sulu began in 2019, which led to increased intensity in these efforts.

The successors of the sultanate won a $14.9 billion award for Sabah from a French arbitration court, over which they have a property claim.

After a Paris appeals court ruled that the arbitral tribunal that issued the verdict lacked jurisdiction to hear the case, Malaysia won a legal battle last year.

The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) in Region 9 spokesperson, Ivan Eric Salvador, stated that the deportees arrived at the port on January 25 in the afternoon on board the MV Antonia, a passenger liner operated by Aleson Shipping Lines that regularly travels between this city and Sabah.

According to Salvador, 97 out of the 800 deportees were children, with 61 males and 36 girls among them. There were 602 men and 101 women among the grownups.

For profiling purposes, they are being temporarily housed at the Processing Center for Displaced Persons, one of the DSWD facilities in Barangay Mampang.

"The preliminary analysis indicated that they were detained as undocumented immigrants in Kota Kinabalu and Sandakan," Salvador stated.

The deportees' movement from the port to the DSWD facility was made easier by the Police Regional Office 9 (PRO 9).

Police support

The soldiers from the Regional Mobile Force Battalion 9, Regional Logistics and Research Development Division, and Regional Community Affairs and Development Division were enlisted for the safe and secure transfer, according to Police Brig. Gen. Bowenn Joey Masauding, regional director of PRO 9.

We have a single truck that travels back and forth between the DSWD facility in Mampang and the port region of Zamboanga City. Our time was 3 p.m. It came to an end at roughly ten p.m., Masauding stated.

My profound thanks goes out to our hardworking PNP officers, who are always willing to lend a hand and are especially helpful in ensuring the safety and security of our returning Filipino citizens. Masauding continued, "Our community's collective spirit of compassion and support will inspire hope and bring inspiration in times of crisis and uncertainty."

Salvador reported that 680 of the first group of returning Filipinos arrived on January 11. They provided care for 6,409 deportees in 2023 before they were all returned to their home cities.

locations of origin

Although many also originate from the Eastern and Central Visayas, Mindanao accounts for the majority of the deportee population.

Representative Khymer Olaso of Zamboanga City requested the nat'l. government to investigate and deal with the ongoing influx of low-income undocumented Filipinos into Sabah through the so-called southern backdoor.

Before being elected to parliament, Olaso captained ships for the MV Antonia, and he recalled that deportations had begun in 1992.

He said, "The sad fact is that these Filipinos are undocumented, [having] no papers, but even though the Malaysian government deports them, they will always find ways to return to Malaysia."

The majority of people who smuggle themselves into the nearest neighboring country do so in pursuit of better opportunities, particularly in Sabah's extensive plantations. Traffickers brought a large number of them there.

The Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) began an investigation of trafficking routes last week in collaboration with other government organizations.

On January 21, about a hundred professionals, specialists, and boat crew members sailed here on PCG's BRP Gabriela Silang, beginning a six-day journey meant to strengthen the nation's capacity to stop human trafficking and migrant smuggling.

The journey is noteworthy because, as we all know, human trafficking is a major issue in the nation, according to Justice Undersecretary Nicolas Felix Ty of the Inter-agency Council Against Trafficking.