Director-general Ruslin Jusoh said the foreigners, 32 men and four women, were arrested in a special operation at 4.30pm at Terminal Bersepadu Selatan-Bandar Tasik Selatan here on Aug 30.

They were found on board a bus from Kelantan.

Ruslin said an immigration team detected three different buses smuggling the undocumented migrants along the East Coast Expressway and trailed them to the bus terminal.

“A total of 20 Bangladeshi men, along with 12 men and four women, all Myanmar nationals, aged between 19 and 45, were arrested upon disembarking.

“Their passports did not have valid security stamps. Some of them did not even possess valid travel documents,” he said in a statement today.

Checks with the department’s system revealed that some of them had been blacklisted for previous offences.

Ruslin said syndicates would charge such foreigners RM10,000 per person to smuggle them from their countries of origin through neighbouring countries using illegal means.

They would be brought usually to Penang or Kuala Lumpur to work illegally. They used public transport to elude the authorities.

“Those arrested today have been brought to the Semenyih immigration depot for further investigation,” Ruslin added.