Immigration Commissioner Jaime Morente has ordered an investigation following serious allegations that certain airport personnel are involved in a human trafficking ring victimizing overseas Filipino workers.
The order stemmed from information that some BI officials posted at the Port Operations Division may be involved in human trafficking. The BI chief said he will be looking into reports of corruption of some of their airport men.
“We will elevate this to the Department of Justice [DOJ], our mother department, for investigation,” Morente said.
“We suspect that other agencies may be included in this complaint as well, as anti-trafficking efforts is a shared responsibility of all members of the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking,” he added.
Morente, however, said that there will be no letup in their drive against trafficking.
“The BI has accomplished so much in preventing human trafficking. We have elevated our status from Tier 2 to Tier 1 in the US State Department’s Trafficking in Persons report, and have retained that good standing for three consecutive years,” he said.
Morente also emphasized the need to have an iron hand to be able to discipline personnel more effectively.
“We believe that disciplinary powers against erring personnel will enable the Bureau to take a more swift action when needed,” Morente said, adding that “this is one of the reasons why we are requesting the urgent passage of the Bureau of Immigration bill during the next congress.
“Currently, our Board of Discipline may only recommend action to the DOJ. It is the DOJ who has the power to hire and fire employees. We believe that the control over administrative matters should be delegated to the BI, for us to be able to enforce immediate sanctions,” he said.
“Our actions on previous incidents of alleged corruption show that we will not hesitate to weed out corrupt employees. The President’s directive is clear. Corruption has no place in BI, not on my watch,” he added.