170 foreigners await deportation in detention center

JAKARTA (JP): One hundred and seventy foreigners whose deportation has been delayed because they do not have immigration documents are crammed into a detention center designed for 75 people in Kalideres, West Jakarta, an official said yesterday.

Spokesman for the immigration Directorate General Mursanudin Ghani said some had been in detention for three years at the holding camp on Jl. Peta Selatan, Kalideres.

A U.S. citizen named James Robert Shower, and a Chinese national Coe A Jien have lived in the center since 1995. Neither were recognized by their embassies, he said.

"We have no funds to deport the foreigners. Under Immigration Law we are obliged to deport them, but the law says nothing about who should fund the operation," Ghani told The Jakarta Post.

The immigration office must provide detainees with meals, he said. By law the meal must consist of rice, vegetable and fish.

Up to four people or one family live in every room in the center, he added.

The overcrowding is compounded by other provinces across Indonesia sending illegal aliens to the center because they do not have local facilities, Ghani explained.

He said the immigration office planned to build a national detention center for illegal immigrants in the near future.

He said most of those currently detained came from developing countries such as Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Nigeria, Bangladesh and the People's Republic of China.

They were arrested for violating immigration regulations, such as overstaying their visa and not having the correct immigration documents.

He said his office had contacted the relevant embassies.

Many of the foreigners, who claimed their passports were missing, were not recognized as citizens by the embassies of countries to which they claimed an allegiance, Ghani said.

He said some of those detained were awaiting money from relatives contacted through their embassies.

Many of the foreigners stranded in Jakarta were on their way to a third country in search of employment.

Immigration officers in Jakarta and Tangerang recently arrested dozens of Sri Lankans who planned to attempt to illegally enter Canada and Australia.

Ghani said the foreigners were not under police detention and were therefore not closely guarded, except those formerly involved in criminal activities.

West Jakarta District Court indicted a 46-year-old Pakistani man on Wednesday for selling heroin at the center. The defendant, Muhammad Khaled Mahmood, has lived in the center for two years.

Ghani said Mahmood would be returned to the center after completing his prison term, if found guilty. (jun)