53 Pinoy Returnees Home from the U.S.

Press Release No 172-03
27 February 2003

53 PINOY RETURNEES HOME FROM THE U.S.

Fifty-three (53) more Filipino deportees arrived this afternoon at the Diosdado Macapagal International Airport (DMIA) in Pampanga on board a chartered flight from the United States. This brings the number of Filipinos sent home involuntarily from the United States aboard chartered aircraft to 200 since last year. The first batch of 63 Filipinos arrived in June and the second batch of 84 came in December.

This third batch, which included 4 females, arrived at 1:13 p.m. on board a Miami Air International Boeing 737 chartered by the US Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) under its Justice Airline Prisoners Transport System (JPATS). The flight originated in San Diego and had stopovers in Hawaii, Wake Island and Guam.

As in the first two JPATS flights in June and December last year, this third batch of Filipinos were sent out from the United States for assorted violations of US Immigration laws and for the commission of various other criminal offenses. Likewise, as in those previous occasions, the Philippine government respects their privacy and will thus not make any of their names public.

According to existing procedures between the Philippine Embassy in Washington and the INS, the Filipinos were accompanied on the flight by a consular officer from the Philippine Consulate General in Los Angeles.

Upon arrival at the DMIA, They were immediately processed by a DFA-led inter-agency team (including the DSWD, DoH, BID, Clark Development Corp. and the Philippine Air Force) before they met up with their welcomers, mostly relatives.