Immigration foils try to smuggle four illegal aliens to UK, Canada

January 23, 2018

Bureau of Immigration (BI) officers at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) recently foiled several attempts by a syndicate to smuggle four illegal aliens to the United Kingdom and Canada, using Manila as a jump-off point.

In a report Tuesday to Immigration Commissioner Jaime Morente, BI port operations division chief Marc Red Mariñas said the intercepted foreign passengers included two Congolese nationals, a Pakistani and a Chinese, all of whom are now confined at the bureau’s detention facility pending deportation proceedings.

Mariñas said Pakistani Waheed Zeeshan and Chinese national Bo Hong were apprehended last Jan. 17 while Congolese passengers Naty Kanda Mizidi and Caleb Mizidi were arrested Jan. 21 at the NAIA 2 terminal.

Morente commended the BI officers responsible for thwarting the human smuggling operations involving the foreigners who attempted to gain illegal entry using spurious travel documents given to them by the syndicate.

Morente said the apprehensions were only the latest in a series of botched attempts by human smuggling syndicates to use Manila as a transit point for their operations.

Zeeshan was apprehended upon his arrival from Kuala Lumpur and after BI fraud examiners certified the British passport he presented was bogus.

It was learned that he planned to leave Manila for London on Jan. 26 and that he his two Pakistani passports in his luggage.

Hong was stopped from leaving for Toronto after he tried to leave by presenting a fake Mexican passport.  The Canadian embassy later certified that the Canadian visa sticker on the passport was counterfeit.

As for the two Africans, they attempted to leave for Vancouver but were offloaded after it was found the Canadian visas on their passports were forged. DMS