17 suspected victims of Human Trafficking were rescued by the Bureau of Immigration (BI) at Mactan-Cebu International Airport (MCIA).

According to the BI, the victims were illegally recruited to work as Household Service Workers (HSW) in the Middle East. They were intercepted last 16 and 17 October when they attempted to board their flights bound for Hongkong and Macau en route to their final destinations in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.

BI Port Operations Division Chief Grifton Medina said it appears that those victims were recruited by a syndicate which separately booked them on several flights in order to mislead immigration officers on the purpose of their trip and to work abroad without documentation.

Medina surmised that due to the BI’s intensified campaign against trafficking, the syndicates are attempting to shift their operations to other exit ports.

“They are, however, wrong in assuming that we are less vigilant in guarding our ports outside Manila,” Medina stressed, adding that BI Commissioner Jaime Morente has already alerted immigration personnel manning the different airports to be extra vigilant following the incident at Mactan.

Ma. Asuncion Palma-Gil, BI-MCIA’s Travel Control and Enforcement Unit head, disclosed that the 17 passengers were offloaded from five different flights and that 13 of them were hired to work in Dubai while the other four were bound for Qatar.

“They all admitted having UAE and Qatari visas in their possession and that they were recruited by individuals they only met on Facebook or through people they know currently working in Dubai and Doha,” Palma-Gil said.