KUALA LUMPUR - The Malaysian Immigration Department has successfully uncovered tactics of illegal immigrants who built underground tunnels in squatter settlements in Pantai Dalam, here to escape from the authorities.
The raid at about 2am on Sunday discovered that some areas of the house had an underground passage that was covered with layers of wood.
The authorities suspected the occupants of the house had dug the ground of the house to create an exit route and it was built in areas covered by pools of water to further complicate the raiding process by the authorities.
The operations dubbed Ops Sapu also uncovered gambling and drug-related activities by the illegal immigrants.
Kuala Lumpur Immigration Director Syamsul Badrin Mohshin said the joint operation along with the Malaysian Civil Defense Department managed to detain 93 foreigners comprising of 47 men, 33 women,10 boys and three girls aged between one and 60 years old.
"Out of that number, a total of 62 individuals arrested are Indonesians and one Myanmar national.
"All of them were found to have no valid documents and overstaying," he told reporters at the raided location.
Syamsul Badrin said the raiding operation, which is the culmination of two weeks of intelligence work, was made after he received complaints from locals about the presence of foreigners in the area.
He said most of the male illegal immigrants detained worked as construction workers while the female immigrants worked as cleaners and or earn an income by baking cakes.
"Early investigation found that the illegal immigrants rented the house at a price of RM200 to RM300 a month for a room in the area," he said.
He said the squatter areas had been raided several times by the authorities since 2015.
"Some of the houses in this area have been renovated by illegal immigrants by building secret entrance for them to enter the special tunnels undergrounds which help them to escape from the authorities," he said.
He said all illegal immigrants detained were taken to the Bukit Jalil Immigration Detention Depot for documentation and further investigation in accordance with Section 6 (1) (c) of the Immigration Act 1959/63 and Section 15 (1) (c) of the same act.