The Bureau of Immigration (BI) said its officers at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) have turned back another convicted American pedophile who attempted to enter the country last weekend.
In a report to Immigration Commissioner Norman Tansingco, the BI’s border control and intelligence unit (BCIU) identified the excluded passenger as 56-year-old Nathan Lee Woodward, who arrived at NAIA’s Terminal 1 from Los Angeles last January 27.
The BI-BCIU said Woodward was denied entry after his name prompted a positive derogatory hit in the bureau’s border control information system when the BI officer who processed him scanned the passenger’s passport.
“He was immediately issued an exclusion order and boarded on the next available PAL flight to Los Angeles that very same day,” BI-BCIU overall deputy chief Joseph Cueto reported.
Records show that Woodward was convicted by a court in Nevada in 1990 on the charge of engaging in lewd and lascivious acts against a 14-year-old child.
As a result of his conviction, he was required to register as a sex offender after serving his sentence.
Activities and movements of registered sex offenders (RSO) in the US and other countries are continuously monitored as it enables authorities to inform their counterparts abroad if any of these sex offenders are reported to be traveling to the latter’s territory.
The Philippine immigration act expressly forbids the entry of persons who have been convicted of crimes involving moral turpitude.
Meanwhile, the BI also reported the exclusion of another American sex offender last February 5 at the NAIA Terminal 3.
The American, identified as Bennison Noveda Flores, arrived on board a United Airlines flight from San Francisco.
He is listed in the California State Registry after being previously convicted of continuous sexual abuse of a child.
Earlier, the BI launched the Project #Shieldkids campaign, urging citizens to report foreign sex predators in the country to their portal at facebook.com/immigration.helpline.ph.
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