Just three months after its founding, the National Immigration Agency (NIA) yesterday was rocked by what the agency's deputy director said was the recent "suspicious" disappearance of sensitive documents amid speculation that human-trafficking rings have positioned moles in key posts throughout the agency.
Furious that the agency had lost 200 blank, alien multiple-entry permits from its Taipei County-based service center last week, Minister of the Interior Lee Yi-yang (
"Minister Lee is infuriated by the agency's grave oversight on this matter," said a press release issued by the ministry, adding that the agency's handling of the problem was "inappropriate."
Lee promised "stiff punishment" for Wu, Deputy Director Tsai Chen-jung (
The agency's other deputy director Steve Wu (
"We initiated a top-down search for the permits after discovering that they were gone, and notified the ministry after failing to locate them," he said. "We have handled the matter in a responsible fashion."
Asked what the worst case scenario would be because of the missing permits, Steve Wu said: "Foreign laborers could get hold of them through trafficking rings and use them to re-enter the country illegally after having already worked here and left."
But, he added, the permits, which bear serial numbers from E0076201 to E0076300 and from E0146201 to E0146300, had already been canceled, and anybody using them to enter the country would likely be apprehended by border control officers.
"This is quite suspicious," Steve Wu said of the missing permits. "They went missing from a desk, and they were definitely stolen by somebody [from within the service center]."
The agency's in-house investigation has so far focused on Chen Ling-fang (陳芳玲), an official at the center, Steve Wu said, adding that his agency had suspended Chen, who has admitted to "misplacing" the permits, and demoted Chang Tseng-liang to a non-managerial position.
Vice Minister of the Interior Lin Mei-chu (
The agency hadn't located the permits as of press time yesterday.
"From now on, such papers must be locked up in safes when not in use, and security guards must be on hand to guard and transport them," Lin said, adding that specific procedures for the handling of permits and other sensitive documents would be implemented soon to prevent any further mishandling.
Earlier this month, a former clerk in the agency's predecessor, the Bureau of Immigration, was indicted on charges of colluding with human traffickers in smuggling Chinese prostitutes into the country in exchange for cash payments.
The National Immigration Agency subsumed the bureau's headquarters and employees in January amid reports that immigration officers' colluding with human traffickers was rampant.
Steve Wu said yesterday that last week's incident of allegedly stolen permits wasn't the first time that such documents had gone missing en masse.
"We had a similar case of many such permits going missing last year," he said, without elaborating.
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