TUMPAT - The Immigration Department of Malaysia found that many undocumented migrants from Pakistan and India have entered the country through Thailand before crossing Sungai Golok illegally.
Its director-general Datuk Ruslin Jusoh said most of the Indian and Pakistani nationals entered the country purportedly to work.
He said once they arrived in this country, they will be taken to a specific location that has been arranged.
"However, we are investigating whether this group came through an agent or a syndicate," he said after attending the Immigration Director-General's Work Visit programme at the Pengkalan Kubor Immigration, Customs, Quarantine and Security Complex (ICQS), today.
Ruslin said based on the interview at the airport, it was found that most of them came to the country as tourists.
"However, their answers were doubtful because they failed to state which hotel they were staying in and did not tell the location they were going to," he said.
He said the Indian and Pakistani citizens also knew that applying for a tourist visa in Malaysia was quite difficult and that they would have to go through several processes including an interview.
Therefore, he said it would be easier for them to choose to go through Thailand before sneaking into the country through an illegal base in Sungai Golok.
It was previously reported that a human trafficking syndicate that transformed a budget hotel, here, into a transit house for undocumented immigrants was busted in an Op Gelombang V operation on Sept 13.
In the raid, 51 were arrested including 39 men and four women from India, two men and two women from Pakistan and four from Thailand aged between two and 60.
Also arrested were five members of the syndicate who were local citizens consisting of the owner of a budget hotel, two caretakers of the premises and two transporters aged between 23 to 57.