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)