Tripoli, (Asian independent) The Libyan Illegal Immigration Control Department has deported 165 female illegal immigrants to their home country of Nigeria.
“Some of them were arrested as they were begging on the streets and others were arrested during raids on criminal hideouts,” the department’s spokesman Haitham Belgasem told Xinhua on Tuesday, adding that more deportation flights would be arranged in the future.
The International Organisation for Migration has said that a total of 7,477 illegal immigrants have been rescued and returned to Libya so far this year, Xinhua news agency reported.
Due to the insecurity and chaos in the country since the fall of late leader Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in 2011, many immigrants, mostly Africans, choose to cross the Mediterranean Sea to European shores via Libya.