DAVAO CITY, Philippines – Immigration Commissioner Jaime Morente is implementing stricter inspection measures in all the country’s cross-border stations amid reports of the influx of foreign terrorists to Mindanao as fighting continues in Marawi City.
The military said at least 89 foreign terrorists were able to sneak into the country over the past months and some of them have taken part in the Marawi siege that started on May 23.
“We have to strengthen our existing border-crossing stations to prevent these reported foreign terrorists from entering the country,” Morente told The STAR yesterday.
Over 200,000 boat trips from Malaysia and Indonesia to the Philippines were reportedly unchecked by authorities as these did not pass through such stations.
The country’s border patrol stations are found in Batuganding town in Davao Occidental, Balabac and Brooke’s Point towns in Palawan, Bongao Tibanban town in Davao Oriental and Taganak in the Sulu Sea.
The border-crossing stations house personnel of the Bureau of Customs, Bureau of Quarantine, Maritime Police, Philippine Coast Guard and the Philippine Navy.
Morente said the Bureau of Immigration (BI) will beef up security by hiring 36 new immigration officers to be deployed in the cross-border stations. The BI also put cameras in all immigration counters to monitor and record every arriving and departing passenger, pilots and crew. The photographs will be automatically placed in immigration servers, which are linked to international servers for future investigations.
Morente also said the joint border patrol earlier agreed on by Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines in a tripartite arrangement would be a big help in monitoring the porous coastal areas in the south.
The tripartite border patrol agreement among the three countries is on top of the existing joint border patrol arrangements that the Philippines has with each of the two countries. – With Evelyn Macairan, Rudy Santos