The Bureau of Immigration has ordered the deportation of a 60-year-old American wanted in Alaska for abducting his two children and bringing them to the Philippines.
The US citizen, identified as Leo James Chaplin, is now detained at the BI detention facility in Bicutan, Taguig City following his arrest inside his boat at the Ocean View Yacht Club in Samal Island, Davao del Norte by operatives from the bureau’s fugitive search unit.
Immigration Commissioner Jaime Morente said Chaplin will be deported immediately for being an undesirable and undocumented alien.
“He is also the subject of an arrest warrant issued by a US district court in Alaska for international parental kidnapping,” Morente said.
Chaplin was reportedly accused of abducting his two children whom he brought to the Philippines in 2014 without their mother’s knowledge and consent.
According to BI intelligence officer and FSU chief Bobby Raquepo, Chaplin arrived in the country four years ago and had illegally stayed here since April 2017 when his working visa expired.
“He then went into hiding upon learning of the arrest warrant that was issued to him by the Alaska court,” Raquepo said.
A US federal law, the International Parental Kidnapping Crime Act of 1993, penalizes the act of removing a child from the US or retaining a child outside the US with the intent to obstruct a parent’s custodial rights, or to attempt to do so. It is punishable by up to three years in prison.
Raquepo said that Chaplin can no longer return to the Philippines upon his deportation as his name was already placed in the BI’s blacklist.