Fund shortage hampers BI’s deportation of unwanted aliens

AN IMMIGRATION detention cell in Taguig City is overcrowded because of lack of funds to deport those aliens already scheduled to be shipped back home.

The holding facility was designed to hold a maximum of 140 detainees, the facility but the jail currently holds 289 foreign nationals with another five are expected to come in soon from Palawan, Immigration chief Norman Tansingco said.

The Immigration admitted overcrowding is a main concern of the bureau in its detention center in Taguig because many of them cannot be immediately deported because of lack of money to buy plane tickets for their deportation, he said.

Tansingco explained that detained inmates were the ones that would shoulder their ticket back to their country of origin, saying “sometimes, their relatives or friends or even their respective embassies would shoulder their plane tickets,”

“The bureau doesn’t have funds to purchase plane tickets for the detained foreigners and we are hoping that in the next year’s budget, congress would allow our request to include it,” he added.

Tansingco also lamented that many of the detained foreigners could not be deported immediately because of their pending cases in Philippine courts.

Many of them hired lawyers to file unfounded cases against themselves to evade deportation.