Since it was established in April 2014, the Interior Ministry’s General Department of Immigration has deported 7,709 foreign nationals from 68 different countries who were in Cambodia illegally, the department’s director, Sok Phal, said at its annual meeting on Friday.
The vast majority of those deported—6,744, or 87.4 percent—have been Vietnamese, he added. General Phal also said that an ongoing census of foreigners was being stymied by the fact that local officials were issuing family books and other official documentation to foreign nationals despite the fact that this was illegal.
He said that beginning this year, the Interior Ministry would start prosecuting officials who persisted in the practice. “We will issue administrative fines and penalize them by sending cases to court,” he said.
