Fifty foreign nationals were arrested for overstaying their visas and other offences in the latest of a series of coordinated police raids on 87 locations across the country early Saturday.
The raids involving teams of police and officers from other agencies targeted locations in Bangkok and other provinces popular among foreigners. Among them were four international schools, one language school, 33 secondary schools and 49 other sites.
A total of 50 foreigners and one Thai national were arrested, said Pol Maj Gen Surachate Hakparn, deputy chief of the Tourist Police Bureau.
Seventeen of the suspects (4 from India, 3 from Vietnam, 3 from Nigeria, 2 from France and one each from Russia, Guinea, Gambia, Cote d’Ivoire and Lesotho), were charged with overstaying their visas.
Illegal entry charges were laid against 31 foreigners (11 from Cambodia, 6 from India, 6 from Laos, 4 from Myanmar, 3 from Vietnam and one from Nigeria). Two Myanmar nationals and one Thai were charged with other offences, he said.
The raids were the 14th in a series of operations staged since the X-Ray Outlaw Foreigner campaign began last year under the slogan "Good guys in, bad guys out". The goal is to crack down on foreigners who entered the country to commit crimes, such as credit card fraud and telephone and online scams targeting Thai victims.
To date, 1,407 foreign suspects have been arrested at 3,716 locations across the country.