Thai man arrested for allegedly transporting illegal migrant workers
A 56-year-old Thai national has been arrested in Pattani province for allegedly smuggling migrant workers into Thailand and later helping them cross the border into Malaysia, Immigration Police revealed on Wednesday.
Immigration Police chief Lt-General Itthipol Itthisaronnachai said that investigators had been tracking down members of a gang that smuggled Bangladeshi workers from Cambodia into the Kingdom until they recently arrested Abdullah (last name withheld), 56, in Nongjik district of Pattani province.
Police believed the suspect was working with Jeh-Arong (last name withheld), 64, who was arrested in October last year while he was driving a van carrying seven illegal migrant workers in Pattani’s Saiburi district.
Jeh-Arong reportedly confessed that his job was to drive migrant workers from the Thai-Cambodian border in Aranyaprathet district of Sa Kaeo province to a camp in Pattani’s Yaring district, from where the illegal migrants later slipped through Thailand’s southern border into Malaysia.
He added that all the migrant workers had travelled from Bangladesh to Cambodia on a commercial airline, and that an agency in Cambodia had been helping them with crossing the border to Sa Kaeo.
Jeh-Arong said he was paid from 100,000 to 140,000 baht for each of the migrants he brought to Pattani.
Itthipol said Abdullah had confessed to his alleged crime.
Itthipol added that Abdullah was on the wanted list for his alleged involvement with a gang that smuggled migrant workers from Myanmar and helped them cross the Pattani border to Malaysia in 2021.
