Police, Immigration conduct crackdown on illegal foreigners
Kenya on Thursday started cracking down on illegal immigrants following public outcry over the influx of Pakistani migrants in the country.
Police and immigration officers swooped on several holding facilities in Nairobi and inspected visas and other travel documents as they sought to arrest those in the country illegally.
At Real Gardens apartments on Waiyaki Way, one of the holding centres for the foreigners that the government said on Tuesday were “tourists”, the papers of more than 450 Pakistanis were checked.
Nairobi Regional Commander Augustine Nthumbi told the Nation that all the visitors in the apartments had valid documents.
“Real Gardens is just but a holding station for all foreigners coming to the country before heading to Saudi Arabia. We were there today and confirmed that all of them are in Kenya legally,” he said.
The visitors, who are workers destined for Riyadh and Doha, are taking advantage of softer Covid-19 conditions on travellers from Kenya to the Middle East, and because it is cheaper to quarantine in Nairobi.
After Thursday’s scrutiny, the visitors were transferred by their agents to hotels where they were initially supposed to isolate in.
Mr Rizwani Aziz, one of the Pakistanis, said that he had been cleared and was being taken to a hotel with “better amenities”.
Pakistani nationals who had been booked at Waiyaki Real Gardens apartment in Nairobi are taken to different hotels by agents on September 30, 2021.
The Nation understands that their agents had avoided expensive city hotels and booked them in public and private facilities in various parts of the Nairobi, Kiambu and Machakos counties.
The Pakistanis, walking in groups, have been spotted at Nyayo Estate, in Syokimau, Athi River, Kitengela, Kabete, Kahawa West, and on Kenyatta and Magadi roads.
Initially, Real Gardens had almost 2,000 foreigners, but the number reduced as some travelled to the Gulf, with 94 leaving yesterday alone, Mr Nthumbi said.
The Interior ministry ordered the crackdown on Wednesday and imposed a freeze on the free transit arrangements it has with Pakistan in a bid to prevent the spread of Covid-19.
Pakistan, like its neighbours in Asia, has battled variants of Covid-19 in the recent past. Last month, Epsilon, a highly transmissible variant first identified in California in 2020, was detected in the country.
Pakistani nationals who had been booked at Waiyaki Real Gardens apartment in Nairobi are taken to different hotels by agents on September 30, 2021.
Researchers have said the Epsilon strain, which has been detected in 34 countries, is resistant to most available vaccines, and has been linked to the fourth wave of the pandemic in Pakistan.
But the Asian country, like Kenya, was recently removed from the United Kingdom’s Red List of countries considered too risky to allow arrivals into Britain.
Additional report by Aggrey Mutambo and Hillary Kimuyu
