Pubdate: Thu, 06 Jan 2005
Source: Manila Standard (Philippines)
Copyright: 2005 Manila Standard
Contact:  http://www.manilastandardonline.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3450
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?236 (Corruption - Outside U.S.)

DEPORTATION ITCH

Law enforcement agencies are mandated to eradicate the drug menace. Yet 
they have shown only indecent haste in allowing, under the guise of 
deportation proceedings, foreign drug suspects to leave the country without 
first subjecting them to the judicial process of investigation and 
prosecution. Why?

The latest example involves 10 Chinese suspects who were arrested after a 
raid on a clandestine shabu laboratory in Davao City on New Year's Day. The 
10 were arrested after witnesses testified that they were seen moving in 
and out of the laboratory. Seven of them were found to be undocumented 
aliens while three had violated immigration laws. By all accounts, they are 
all undesirable aliens.

Authorities assured media that the 10 will be deported only after they have 
served their sentences, if found guilty, or are acquitted for lack of evidence.

Have authorities forgotten? Illegal drug manufacturing and trafficking are 
classified as heinous crimes punishable by death! If they are found guilty, 
the 10 should be sentenced to death by lethal injection. So what is there 
to deport after the convicts have served their sentences?

Granting without conceding that under the law, these aliens have to be 
deported, what is to prevent them from returning to the Philippines with 
new identities, new passports and possibly, new faces, to set up new shabu 
laboratories? This is possible, given the country's porous borders and the 
government's lax and ineffective implementation of immigration laws. 
Putting these aliens on the immigration blacklist is no guarantee that they 
will not return.

Hasty moves to deport drug dealers and manufacturers raise suspicions in 
the same way that previously raided (but abandoned) laboratories - with 
drug making materials all over the place amid a stench that spread to 
neighboring communities - did. The chances that suspects, laboratories and 
materials will be recycled for use either by syndicates or scalawags in 
uniform multiply with every half-hearted apprehension.

A real, honest-to-goodness campaign against illegal drugs would ensure that 
suspects - specially foreigners - are jailed, charged in court and punished.

Foreign suspects should not be deported - allowed to fly the coop - until 
after they go through the judicial wringer that does not exempt native suspects.
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