Malaysia’s Immigration Department has pledged to further intensify operations to round up illegal immigrants in the time ahead.

Some of the illegal immigration nabbed during a raid at a construction site in Port Dickson, Malaysia. (Photo: AFP/VNA)

The department’s director general Mustafar Ali said last week that it will strengthen ongoing efforts to detain illegal immigration beginning next month.

Employers who hire and harbour illegal foreign workers will also be arrested.

More than 3,000 illegal immigrants have been so far arrested under a nationwide operation namely “Op Mega 3” launched on 1 July .

A total of 47,092 illegal immigrants, including 885 children under 12 years old, were detained throughout 2017, according to the department.

The arrests were made after authorised agencies examined documents of 188,884 foreigners in more than 16,000 operations across the country. Of the arrested, there were 33,079 men and 13,128 women.

Many of the children who were detained had been brought into this country by their parents while a number of them were born here.

Also in 2017, as many as 1,257 employers were caught for hiring and harbouring illegal foreign workers and 80 percent of them had been charged while the remaining was in the process of being charged.

Malaysia has worked with concerned parties, including non-governmental organisations on appropriate measures to manage unlawful immigrants and their children at the detention depots.

(Source: VNA)