The Bureau of Immigration rescued 13 overseas Filipino workers from two Korean illegal recruiters who tried to leave the country to work in Malaysia and Korea.
BI port operations division chief Grifton Medina identified the Koreans as Lee Jeong Seop and Pyun Jung Su who were responsible for arranging and shouldering the victims' expenses.
Medina said the victims were intercepted at the Clark International Airport in Angeles City, Pampanga while being accompanied by the Koreans.
However, both Lee and Pyun managed to leave the country but Medina recommended the two foreigners in the BI blacklist to prevent them from returning to the Philippines and recruit more victims.
“We are sending a stern warning to foreigners that they should not abuse their privilege and violate the conditions of their stay here by engaging in illegal activities such as recruitment and human trafficking,” Medina said.
He said the trick employed by the aliens in facilitating their victims’ departure would not work as it would not escape the attention of our immigration officers who are adept in detecting schemes to spirit human trafficking victims out of the country.
The BI report said that Lee arranged the travel of eight of the victims who were stopped at the Clark airport as they were about to board a flight of Jetstar Airways to Singapore en route to their final destination in Kuala Lumpur.
The passengers, who were disguised as tourists, admitted that they were hired by Lee to work as English instructors for Korean students in Malaysia.
A check of the BI’s travel database showed that the eight passengers were already stopped from leaving the CIA when they were intercepted before they could board a Scoot Airlines flight to Singapore last month..
The five other victims were intercepted at CIA as they were being accompanied by Pyun in boarding a Cebu Pacific flight to Hong Kong.
The passengers, all women, said they were supposed to proceed to Korea where they were recruited by Pyun to work as nightclub entertainers.
Verification of their travel records revealed that three of the women were also previously stopped from leaving the country for failure to explain their purpose of travel.
The victims were later turned over to the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking for investigation.