JAKARTA - Indonesia’s Foreign Ministry said July 1 it is negotiating with Cambodia so Indonesians held in immigration detention do not have to pay overstay fines while waiting to return home. Director for Indonesian Citizen Protection Heni Hamidah said about 1,840 Indonesians remained in several immigration detention facilities in Cambodia as of June 2026, Antara reported.

The ministry said about 200 Indonesians were held at Phocentong, 592 at another Phocentong facility, 948 at Bati, and 100 in Phnom Penh. Heni said the detainees were being processed for return, with the government still issuing SPLP documents for citizens who need temporary travel papers.

“Indeed, all of them are in the process of being returned, especially for the issuance of SPLP. If there is a waiting period, we are also negotiating with Cambodia so they do not have to pay immigration fines,” Heni said.

The detention figure is only part of the wider return queue. Heni said 11,986 Indonesians had reported directly to the Indonesian Embassy in Phnom Penh and asked for help returning home between January and June. Metro TV reported that the six-month figure had already passed the 5,088 people handled by the embassy during all of 2025.

The fine issue follows Cambodia’s earlier approval of overstay fine waivers for Indonesians linked to online scam syndicates. KBRI Phnom Penh said Cambodia had approved waivers for 5,950 Indonesians. The embassy said 3,630 Indonesians had been facilitated to return to Indonesia as of May 22.

The embassy later said Indonesians covered under Batches 1 to 10 had to leave Cambodia by June 30, according to Antara. Reports received by June 20 would be processed in Batch 11. From July 1, approvals for Batches 1 to 10 would be cancelled, and Indonesians still in Cambodia would again face overstay fines under existing immigration rules.

The surge followed Cambodia’s enforcement operations against online scam centres. Metro TV reported that Heni linked the rise in return requests to large-scale raids on scam compounds, with some Indonesians waiting in embassy shelters or facilities provided by Cambodia before they could leave.

Cambodia’s scam-centre crackdown has also raised a victim-protection problem. The UNODC Cambodia office launched a Phnom Penh campaign on March 19 against trafficking for forced criminality in scam centres, saying thousands of victims across Southeast Asia had been deceived, coerced, and exploited through digital platforms.