SA KAEO: Police have deported 34 Cambodian Muslims, rejecting their travel requests to work in the deep South due to their failure to meet immigration requirements.
The group -- 32 males and 2 females -- was told to return to the Cambodian border town of Poipet Thursday just after they had crossed the Thai-Cambodian frontier in Sa Kaeo.
Thai officers said they needed to temporarily detain them after learning their true purpose in order to "prevent any misunderstanding". Sa Kaeo immigration police chief Pol Col Benchaphon Rotsawat asked Cambodian authorities to join the investigation into the travellers' status.
All of them were travelling on tourist visas but many said they planned to work in the southern provinces.
Others claimed Thailand was just their transit point, as they planned to travel to Malaysia for work through a checkpoint in Narathiwat's Sungai Kolok district in the deep South.
By law, foreigners from neighbouring countries will be allowed to pursue jobs in Thailand only under the memorandum of understanding (MoU) between the respective governments.
However, the officers on Thursday found their trips were "not endorsed" by authorised officials and the group could not tell them exactly where they planned to stay in Thailand.
An inspection also found that each of them brought between 1,000 and 3,000 baht, which fell short of the minimum requirement of 20,000 baht.
Also on Thursday, railway police in Songkhla's Hat Yai district dealt with a similar case of illegal travellers involving three Cambodian Muslims.
They found alleged irregularities with three female passengers who were aboard a train from Bangkok to Sungai Kolok in Narathiwat.
Two of them did not have passports while the other did not have her passport stamped properly.
The group -- Kho Navy, 29, Math Hanifas, 55 and Sos Simah, 31 -- told officers they came from Poipet and were on their way to Malaysia.
Police suspect their trip was organised by a gang linked with human traffickers.
Earlier this month, they found three Cambodian youths studying at a pondok, an Islamic religious school, in Pattani's Mayo district.
The school broke no laws and had no connection with the southern insurgency, but the youngsters were among 11 foreign students who were arrested for not having proper visas.