COTABATO CITY - More than a hundred Filipino deportees arrived before dawn Wednesday in Bongao town in Tawi-Tawi from Malaysia, officials said.
The Humanitarian Emergency Assistance and Response Team (HEART) of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao said a total of 144 Filipinos were deported, 122 of them are men and the rest are women and children.
The HEART said that the deportees were ferried from the island state of Sabah to Tawi-Tawi by the M/L MidEast Transport.
Thousands of Filipinos have returned home from Sabah by batches since the Malaysian government launched a crackdown on illegal aliens, regardless of nationalities, in 2011.
Workers of the Tawi-Tawi provincial government and employees of the ARMM’s social welfare department are now attending to the needs of the 144 deportees.
They will be returned to their respective hometowns by the ARMM government after undergoing necessary documentation processes.