More illegal border crossers from Myanmar arrested in western Thailand

In Thailand’s western province of Kanchanaburi, police have caught 2 more groups of migrants crossing the border from Myanmar. Police say they arrested them and their guide as they crossed over the border illegally, searching for jobs. An army ranger patrol says they saw 20 people carrying baggage. They were walking along a track at Ban Patrudan border village in Ban Kao at around 5pm yesterday.

The patrol says they stopped the group of 11 men and 9 women, and found they had no travel documents. The group said they had travelled from Dawei township in Myanmar to the border of the province. They said it took them 4 days to cross the border on a foot along a natural path. They said their guide was to take them to a location in which they would then be picked up and transferred to jobs in central Thailand. The fee for this was anywhere from 13,000-20,000 baht each to a broker in Myanmar. The migrants’ temperatures were checked, with police saying the results were normal.

The same patrol later caught a second group of illegal migrants, consisting of 7 men and 2 women. Those migrants told the police that they were being transferred to Samut Prakan province, which shares a provincial border with Bangkok, for jobs.

The latest group of migrants adds to the thousands of foreign nationals that have been arrested this year for illegally crossing land borders into Thailand. From January 1 to May 9, a total of 15,378 people have been arrested for illegally crossing land borders into Thailand. Out of the people arrested, 6,072 were from Myanmar, 5,114 were from Cambodia and 882 were from Laos.

The Thai Immigration Bureau is working with border patrol officers to tighten security along Thailand’s borders, the bureau’s chief Sompong Chingduang told the Bangkok Post.

“Those who enter Thailand illegally will be prosecuted under the immigration law, the communicable diseases and the emergency decree.”

In Thailand’s last wave of Covid-19 infections in December and January, fingers pointed at illegal Burmese migrants as the epicentre of infections were concentrated at a fishing hub in Samut Sakhon, affecting a large migrant worker population.

SOURCE: Bangkok Post