As many as 48 Bangladeshis who were recently detained in Spain for illegal stay there returned home yesterday under a deportation process, immigration officials said.
“A total of 48 Bangladeshis who were recently detained in Spain for illegal stay returned home today,” ASP Zaman of Immigration Department of Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport told BSS.
A Foreign Ministry statement earlier said Spanish police recently detained 51 foreign nationals initially thinking all of them to be Bangladeshis. But the foreign office in Dhaka later confirmed 49 of them to be citizens of Bangladesh after verification of their documents received from Madrid.
“This was conveyed to the Spanish government and accordingly, the 49 undocumented Bangladesh citizens are being repatriated to Bangladesh on August 20,” the statement said.
It, however, said such deportation of Bangladesh citizens was not an isolated incident as “many aspiring overseas workers from Bangladesh unknowingly fall prey to unscrupulous recruitment agencies and traffickers”. “In most cases they pay handsome amount of money for promised jobs in foreign countries. They, however, often end up as undocumented migrants in foreign lands and are generally detained by the law enforcing agencies of countries concerned,” the statement read.
It added “the government wishes to advise the general public to exercise caution and to deal only with reliable and legal channels for overseas employment”.
