Police nab 44 Iranian illegal immigrants

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Sat, 12/04/2010

The police caught 44 Iranian illegal immigrants, who were setting sail to Australia, at the coast of Indramayu regency in West Java for trespassing into Indonesian territory without official documents.

According to Adj.Sr.Comr. Rudi Setiawan, the chief of the Indramayu police resort, the immigrants, who had traveled from Jakarta via land, were caught while boarding a large ship from a small one. They previously reached Jakarta by airplane from Malaysia, he further said.

“Police officers have tailed them from Jakarta. The plan was to apprehend them together with the network which arranges the movement of illegal immigrants,” he added, as reported by kompas.com.

The group of immigrants, who are temporarily housed at the Cirebon Immigration Office, are composed of 29 adult males, six adult females and nine children.

The head of the Cirebon Immigration Office, LK Irademor Greg, said that officers would send the immigrants to the Jakarta immigration detention facility after officers have finished collecting data.

Yet, he did not specify when the data collection process would end since officers faced problems in communicating with the immigrants, many of whom spoke no English.