2,000 await deportation in Sabah's migrant crackdown

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About 2,000 illegal immigrants are being held in detention camps awaiting deportation after the biggest crackdown in Sabah in decades, officials said today.

More than 3,000 homes have also been demolished in the first week of a sweep which aims to flush out some 30,000 migrants, mostly Filipinos and Indonesians, police said.

"We will continue indefinitely, to get them all out," a police spokesman for Sabah, which is in eastern Malaysia on Borneo island, told AFP .

The aggressive drive, which started last Tuesday, is the largest operation to flush out illegal immigrants in 20 years, said the state's Chief Minister Chong Kah Kiat.

Stay focus

"We should take the opportunity that has not come by for the last 20 years. We want to make sure all are cleaned up," Chong was quoted as saying by The Star daily.

"Let us not try to divert the focus of what we are doing today - to get rid of all illegal immigrants."

Police had earlier said the crackdown was also aimed at weeding out armed militant groups, especially from the Philippines, which they said were trying to set up bases in the state's squatter colonies.

The action in Sabah is in line with a tougher approach throughout Malaysia, which is home to 750,000 legal foreign workers and hundreds of thousands of mainly-Indonesian illegal immigrants.

The government has said it aims to deport about 10,000 Indonesian illegal immigrants every month.

While Malaysia says illegal migrants have contributed to a growth in crime and other social problems, the tough new line is also seen as a bid to protect jobs for locals in a time of economic hardship.



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