Manila Councilor Bernie Ang: Bureau of Immigration raids hurting talks with Hong Kong

HONG KONG nationals are reportedly crying foul over these pictures showing Chinese and Taiwanese nationals believed to be illegal aliens being rounded up for questioning in Manila. CONTRIBUTED PHOTOS

A Manila councilor has criticized authorities for what he described as the indiscriminate arrest of suspected illegal aliens in Binondo at a time the city government is trying to appease Hong Kong over the 2010 hostage-taking incident.

“I just came back from Hong Kong and this is what they showed me,” Councilor Bernie Ang told the Inquirer as he showed pictures of policemen in full battle gear inside shopping malls in the Chinatown district.

In a privilege speech last week, he denounced the raids being conducted by policemen upon the instruction of the Bureau of Immigration (BI) as well as the warrantless arrest of Chinese and Taiwanese nationals.

Ang claimed that the policemen who have been conducting raids since December use mission orders which do not specify who could be arrested or the offense for which they could be detained.

“At a time when we are negotiating with Hong Kong on the hostage crisis, here we are harassing foreigners,” said the councilor who went to Hong Kong in February to continue talks with families of the Hong Kong tourists killed in the 2010 hostage-taking incident.

Ang noted that one of the demands of the Hong Kong government for the normalization of ties with the Filipino government was the implementation of measures to protect foreign nationals in the Philippines.

In a statement, however, immigration chief Siegfred Mison said the bureau would intensify its crackdown on illegal aliens in the country.

Over the past months, the BI has caught 100 Chinese nationals found to be illegally working in shopping malls in Manila, Baclaran, Cebu City and Butuan City.

As for the 36 Chinese and Taiwanese nationals who were rounded up in a raid last month after they were suspected of working in malls, they were brought to the BI office for the verification of their passports and visas.

An investigation showed that all of them either had no passport or were holding on to expired travel documents, Mison said.

Of the 36 arrested, 17 have been deported while two were released on bail. The others remain in the bureau’s custody.

Mison, meanwhile, urged foreigners with expired visas to surrender voluntarily and leave the country as soon as possible. With Jocelyn R. Uy