By Ariel Fernandez
Bureau of Immigration (BI) officers at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) arrested on Sunday morning a Taiwanese, who attempted to leave the country twice by passing himself off as a Filipino.
Bureau of Immigration (MANILA BULLETIN)
Immigration Port Operations Division Chief Grifton Medina identified the fake Filipino as Su Ping Yen, 27, who was apprehended before dawn Sunday while attempting to board an Air Asia flight to Taipei.
Medina said the Taiwanese was stopped from leaving after the officers saw that Su was in the BI’s alert list for possessing a questionable Philippine passport.
He is currently detained at the detention facility in Camp Bagong Diwa, Taguig City, pending his deportation for using a spurious immigration document.
Members of the BI’s Travel Control and Enforcement Unit (TCEU), who questioned Su later, found that hours earlier he was offloaded from his Taipei-bound flight by Air Asia personnel who doubted the authenticity of the Philippine passport he presented.
The airline referred the matter to the BI’s forensic document laboratory which confirmed that the passport was indeed fraudulent.
After bing denied by Air Asia, he again booked another flight to Taipei and attempted to leave using his Taiwanese passport,” said BI TCEU Chief Erwin Ortanez. “He was, however, caught as we were already on alert and were ready to intercept him.