Home Minister Saifuddin Nasution says Immigration Department detention depots face overcrowding, with a combined capacity of about 20,000 people nationwide.
PETALING JAYA: The Immigration Department continues to conduct daily raids on foreign nationals but is facing overcrowding at its detention depots, which have a combined capacity of about 20,000 people, said Home Minister Datuk Seri Saifuddin Nasution Ismail.
He said continuous enforcement operations had enabled the department to identify hotspots nationwide where foreign nationals live, stay or gather, based on data collected during raids.
“Those detained generally fell into four categories: foreigners who entered Malaysia without documents, those whose passes had expired, those who misused their work or student passes, and individuals classified as refugees,” he said at a press conference after visiting the Home Ministry’s Madani Adopted Village and Adopted School Programme in Machang, Kelantan.
He said the department had compiled data to identify and profile the different groups, adding that each category required a different approach.
Saifuddin also confirmed that the identified hotspots were areas where enforcement raids consistently yielded significant results.
He said immigration operations involved not only agencies under the Home Ministry but also other authorities, including Kuala Lumpur City Hall, local councils and the Companies Commission of Malaysia.
On border security, Saifuddin said the Kelantan police chief had been instructed to ensure round-the-clock surveillance along border routes to curb undocumented cross-border movements.
He said measures included dismantling illegal jetties and strengthening border enforcement, but acknowledged that such efforts could not completely eliminate drug-related activities because organised crime networks had been entrenched for decades.
“Can these measures completely stop the problem? The answer is no. We are dealing with organised crime that has been entrenched for decades,” he said.
He stressed that while enforcement could help reduce drug-related activities, tackling drug abuse required a collective effort.
Saifuddin also said Pengkalan Chepa Prison was the most overcrowded among the country’s 41 prisons, while more than 90% of convictions at Machang Prison were drug-related.