MORE than 20,300 Filipinos were barred from leaving the country from January to June this year, mostly on suspicion that they were victims of human trafficking syndicates while others were believed to be intending to work abroad without proper documents, the Bureau of Immigration said.
The move was part of the bureau’s sustained drive against human trafficking, which prevented at least 20,316 travelers from leaving the country, according to Immigration Commissioner Jaime Morente.
He said the offloaded travelers failed to present proof that they were legitimate tourists and were not going abroad at their destinations.
He explained that a passenger’s departure is deferred whenever immigration officers suspect that the passenger is a possible victim of human trafficking and illegal recruitment.
“The campaign has been in high gear, and there will be no letup in our effort to secure our citizens from being victims of human trafficking or illegal recruitment,” Morente said.
“We are determined to impose the stiffest disciplinary action of any of our personnel caught conniving with these trafficking syndicates,” Morente added.
The immigration chief issued the statement after President Rodrigo Duterte’s recent State of the Nation Address where the fight against human trafficking was identified as one of his administration’s priority programs.
It also comes in the wake of the release of the US State Department’s report placing the Philippines under Tier 1 of its annual trafficking in persons (TIP) watchlist.
Countries under Tier 1 “fully meet” the minimum standards “for the elimination of human trafficking” under the US Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) of 2000. The Philippines is the only Southeast Asian country under Tier 1.
It was learned that of the more than 20,000 travelers barred from leaving the country, more than three-fourths were denied departure at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport while the rest were offloaded at the airports in Mactan, Clark, Iloilo, Kalibo, and Davao. About 1,500 of them were intercepted at the Zamboanga seaport.
The bureau’s Travel Control and Enforcement Unit also referred the cases of 317 offloaded passengers to the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking for further investigation and possible filing of court cases.