"They were arrested in two apartments during the raids that we recently launched," Head of Bandung City`s Immigration Office Ari Budidjanto told journalists here on Wednesday.
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 of being involved in suspicious activities around their neighborhood.
Assisted by the local police, the immigration officials then launched the raids during which they found that the Nigerian citizens failed to show their valid stay permits, Budidjanto noted.
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, he explained.
"The Nigerian citizens are now being detained in a detention room of the Bandung-based immigration office for further questioning," he added.
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.
Reporting by Asep Firmansyah
Editing by Rahmad Nasution
Reporter: Antara
Editor: Suharto
Copyright © ANTARA 2019
