The Bureau of Immigration said its officers at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) arrested two more illegal aliens who attempted to leave the country.
In a statement, Immigration Commissioner Joel Anthony Viado were arrested separately at the NAIA terminal 3 before they could board their outbound flights.
The passengers were identified as Indian national Ram Baldev, 43, who was apprehended on Oct. 23, and Australian Peter Anthony McFarlane, 65, who was intercepted the following day.
Viado said both passengers were not allowed to leave after BI officers who encountered them found discrepancies in their documentation.
“A check of our travel database later confirmed both of them have no arrival record, thus bolstering our suspicion that they are illegal entrants,” the BI chief added.
In BI parlance, illegal entrants pertain to foreigners who arrive in the country without passing inspection by immigration authorities and without proper documents.
McFarlane and Baldev were subsequently turned over to personnel of the border control and intelligence unit (BCIU) and transferred to the BI detention facility in Camp Bagong Diwa, Taguig City pending deportation proceedings.
“They will be included in our blacklist and banned from re-entering the Philippines after they are deported,” Viado said.
Reports said that Baldev was about to board a Jetstar flight to Singapore when he was stopped for having no arrival stamp on his passport.
He claimed when interviewed that he last arrived in the country sometime in 2018 and never departed since then. BI officials suspect that he may have used a different travel document or identity during his arrival.
McFarlane, on the other hand, had booked a Cebu Pacific flight to Melbourne but was likewise denied departure clearance for having a fake arrival stamp on his passport.
He alleged that he arrived aboard a yacht in Zamboanga City last Oct. 17 but a check of the BI’s database yielded no such record of his travel.
Upon checking with the BI’s forensic documents laboratory, it was confirmed that the immigration stamp affixed in his passport was counterfeit.
