REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, BANDUNG -- The Indonesian immigration authorities in Bandung, West Java Province, have detained eight Nigerian citizens for alleged misuse of visa or stay permit. They were arrested in two apartments during the raids recently.
The Nigerian citizens were arrested in Buah Batu Park and Newton Bandung Apartments after the immigration authorities received reports from local residents who suspected the Nigerians allegedly involved in suspicious activities around their neighborhood.
Assisted by the local police, the immigration officials then launched the raids. They found that the Nigerian citizens failed to show their valid stay permits.
The immigration officials who questioned them found that their valid visa was 60 days past the expiry date. They also discovered that several of them had intentionally torn their passports, Head of Bandung City's Immigration Office Ari Budidjanto explained.
"The Nigerian citizens are now being detained in a detention room of the Bandung-based immigration office for further questioning," Budidjanto told journalists here on Wednesday.
The cases related to violation of immigration regulations have frequently occurred in Indonesia. In September 2018, for instance, the Cirebon Immigration Office took three foreign nationals in custody for misusing their stay permit.
"We took a Frenchman, identified as NNT (21), and two Vietnamese, PXT (33) and HT (25) in custody," Head of the Cirebon Immigration Office Muhammad Tito Adrianto remarked.
The three foreigners worked in a factory in Cirebon without working permit, violating immigration regulation, Adrianto noted.
Due to the seriousness of those cases, Director General of Immigration at the Ministry of Law and Human Rights Ronny F Sompie has sought a Monitoring Team for Foreigners (Timpora) in each district/city to optimize the supervision of the existence of foreign citizens.
"Monitoring efforts must continue to be improved, such as being able to follow the Regional Intelligence Community," Sompie revealed in a statement last year.
He, however, reminded that the immigration officers only had the authority to process the misuse of residence permits and not criminal acts, while the cases related to working permit belonged to the authorities of relevant agency.
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