The government has decided to take an initiative to deport around 11,000 foreigners staying in Bangladesh without valid documents over the years.

Liberation War Affairs Minister AKM Mozammel Haque made the disclosure at a press conference at the secretariat following a meeting of the cabinet committee on law and order.

“Intelligence agencies already have identified the foreigners staying illegally. Problem is that they have no money to return home.…So we will request the government to allocate money so that we can sent them back to their respective countries,” he told reporters.

According to the law enforcers, most of the illegal foreigners are from different African countries, he said adding that many of them are involved in different sorts of crimes.

Currently, 633 foreigners are in different jails in the country and of them, 56 are serving different jail terms and 500 are under trial.

Besides, the process is on to deport the rest 77 as their jail term have already expired, according to jail sources.  

According to law enforcers, many of these immigrants enter Bangladesh as football players, students or businessmen, but continue to stay even after expiry of their visas or work permits.

They never tried to return home, even the embassies of their respective countries in Dhaka did not respond when the authorities concerned contacted them to discuss the issue, the minister said. 

Many of them have destroyed their passport so that law enforcers cannot identify their nationalities, according to findings of the intelligence agencies.

Besides, many African countries have no embassy in Bangladesh, creating a huge problem to identify them for deportation, he said.