Illegal imigrants sent to Pekanbaru detention center

Dumai - A total of 18 Afghan and Pakistani illegal immigrants who have been arrested by water police personnel of the Police Headquarters during a recent patrol had been handed over to the Pekanbaru immigration detention center in Riau Province.

"The verification of the immigrants and the transfer reports had been completed, and now they are being sent to the detention center because they will find more comfortable living facilities," Head of the Dumai Immigration Control and Action Division Yusuf Rinjani said on Friday.

He said the political asylum seeking immigrants had been caught and arrested when they were on a motorized boat in the Dumai waters.

The illegal immigrants were later subjected to several days of verification at the Dumai water police headquarters.

He said it was impossible to hold the foreign prisoners too long at the Dumai immigration office, because such prisoners are normally ordinary cases.

"The immigrants left Pekanbaru on a bus under the guard of armed police personnel," he said.

He also said that the illegal immigrants went from Pakistan to Abu Dhabi, then to Kuala Lumpur and Malaka.

"They later managed to enter the Dumai waters because hustlers also from Dumai," he said.

But when passing the Dumai waters unlucky for the immigrants they had been caught police patrol boat KP Puyuh 647 of the water police of the police headquarters.

He said in the examinations they had language problems as they knew only Persian normally used by immigrants very difficult to understand.

"And for smoother examination and verification translators had to be secured from Jakarta," he said.

In the meantime, the hustlers and crew who brought the illegal immigrants are now still being held by the police.

"Two people allegedly acting as distributors of the immigrants from Malaysia are now still being examined to reveal the organization network which had busted the immigration control," Yusuf Rinjani said.