Tangerang penitentiary to house illegal foreigners

Tangerang penitentiary to house illegal foreigners

JAKARTA (JP): The women's and children's penitentiary in
Tangerang will soon also be used to house illegal foreigners in
order to relieve overcrowding in the Cengkareng deportation
center, an official said on Tuesday.

The Immigration Office's Director for Control and Enactment
Affairs Zaiman Nurmatias said talks with related officials were
finished, but that the plan was yet to be carried out.

He said the plan should be implemented immediately, because
the current deportation center, which is under the supervision of
the immigration office, was inundated with foreigners.

"The capacity of our sole deportation center in Cengkareng is
only for about 70 people, but the place is now home to more than
150 people," Nurmatias said.

He said the use of the women's and children's penitentiary on
Jl. M. Yamin in Tangerang was only a temporary measure until the
new quarantine center in Tangerang had been constructed. He said
work on the building would begin next year.

"The fact that we have limited space for arrested foreigners
has created a dilemma: on the one hand we are willing to control
foreigners and arrest those breaching the immigration
regulations, but on the other hand we have no adequate shelters
for them," Nurmatias said.

Head of the office's public relations division Mursanudin A.
Ghani said this year the office had conducted at least three
raids, which had led to the apprehension of 45 foreigners.

Following the latest raid conducted last week by a joint team
in Central Jakarta, thirteen Africans were charged with
overstaying their visas.

Nurmatias said the immigration office sometimes experienced
difficulties deporting the illegal foreigners back to their
countries. He said one impediment was the foreigner's lack of
official entry-exit documents.

"Some of the illegal foreigners are also married to
Indonesians, which, considering the human rights reasons, puts
the immigration office into a difficult situation.

"Another difficulty is that sometime embassies can't confirm
whether the people are really their citizens. Also sometimes, the
country of the arrested foreigners does not have an embassy or a
representative offices here, forcing us sometime to contact their
representatives in other nearby countries, such as Singapore or
Japan," he said.

Nurmatias said that often, the foreigners' embassies here
spent too much time in giving financial assistance for the
deportation of their citizens that resulted in the crowded
quarantine.

"Our country has become an oasis for foreigners due to the
weakening of rupiah. They will make every effort to stay here,
even by using fake visas."

Nurmatias said foreigners usually obtained the fake visas in
Thailand through syndicate networks.

The immigration office data shows that a total of 269
foreigners have been rejected for entry into the country in the
past eight months of this year. The objections related to "using
fake visas, possessing a passport with a date of validity of less
than six months, and carrying less than US$2,000, the minimum
amount required for living costs here".

During the same period, 384 foreigners were deported. (ind)