JAKARTA - The Philippines’ Bureau of Immigration said in a May 24 release that three Filipinas arrived at Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal 1 on May 12 from Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia.

The bureau said the women were in their twenties to thirties and returned on an AirAsia flight. The victims were allegedly being recruited through an illegal exit scheme and later exploited abroad.

Initial debriefing by the bureau’s Immigration Protection and Border Enforcement Section found that the women left the Philippines separately in June 2025 through an alleged illegal migration corridor in Palawan. Authorities said a male facilitator assisted them before they boarded a small boat bound for Malaysia through an unauthorized route.

The women were allegedly promised hotel receptionist jobs in Malaysia with salaries reaching PHP 100,000 a month. The bureau said they later found they would instead be made to work at KTV bars, where they were allegedly forced to accompany customers, consume alcohol and rely only on customer tips for income.

“Victims are deceived with fake promises of high-paying jobs abroad, only to end up in exploitative and abusive conditions,” Immigration Commissioner Joel Anthony Viado said. He said the case showed how organized illegal recruitment and trafficking syndicates use backdoor exits to avoid immigration inspection.

The return adds to a series of Philippine immigration cases involving unauthorized sea exits. In March, the bureau reported the return of two Filipino men from Laos who allegedly left through a Zamboanga backdoor route in 2025 after being recruited for supposed overseas jobs and later forced into online romance scam work.

Palawan has also appeared in recent interception cases. In an earlier operation back in January 2025, the bureau said six trafficking victims were stopped after allegedly trying to leave through Bancalaan Island in Balabac, Palawan, by small boat after being recruited through Telegram and offered jobs in Thailand.

A Bali Process Regional Support Office report in October 2024 said trafficking networks running cyber-scam centres across Southeast Asia had made coordinated national and regional responses increasingly important. It said the Philippine anti-trafficking council and the RSO convened representatives from 18 Philippine government agencies, 12 embassies and international organisations to discuss scam-centre trafficking. 

The bureau said the three women were turned over to the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking for assistance and further investigation.