789 employers arrested as Immigration reports 17,313 detentions

The Immigration Department carried out 5,010 enforcement operations nationwide this year up to 25 May, inspecting 71,734 individuals. Those operations resulted in 17,313 detentions for various immigration offences.

Immigration director-general Datuk Zakaria Shaaban said 789 employers were also arrested, on suspicion of harbouring or hiring foreigners without valid permits.

Most offences involved overstaying and misuse of immigration passes under the Immigration Act.

Who was detained

By nationality, the largest groups detained were:

• Indonesians — 5,578
• Bangladeshis — 3,533
• Myanmar nationals — 2,856
• Filipinos — 1,990
• Pakistanis — 811

The part that usually gets left out

Zakaria used the same briefing to push back on a common assumption — that foreigners gathering in public are necessarily undocumented.

He said Malaysia currently has more than three million foreigners holding valid immigration documents, and that hotspot areas such as KLCC often see large groups gathering during long weekends and festive seasons, which leads some Malaysians to assume they are undocumented. Based on the department's own inspections, he said, many of those people do hold valid passes and permits.

He also noted that some social media content creators may be contributing to the perception by producing sensational material for engagement, and said the public should understand that not every foreign national in the country is breaking immigration law.

Even so, he said enforcement would continue to be intensified, because concern among members of the public remains.

Why this matters to employers

The number to look at here is not 17,313. It is 789 — the employers arrested.

That figure tells you enforcement is not one-sided. Hiring without valid permits, or housing workers who lack them, is acted on directly against the business.

The second thing worth reading carefully is *what kind* of offence was most common: overstaying and pass misuse. Neither of those describes a worker who never had documents. Both describe workers who did — and then drifted out of compliance.

That is a materially different risk profile, because it is the kind that builds up quietly inside an otherwise ordinary operation:

• A pass lapses while a renewal is being processed, and the worker keeps working
• A worker is moved to a different role, site or related company than the one their pass names
• A worker stays on after a contract ends while "the paperwork is being sorted out"

What we would suggest

Treat permit expiry dates the way you would treat a licence renewal — tracked ahead of time, not discovered afterwards. And when a worker's role or workplace changes, check whether the pass still matches before the change happens rather than after.

If you want a second pair of eyes on your current workforce documentation, that is something we do.

Source

New Straits Times, 27 May 2026 — "Public concern over foreigners persists despite 17,313 illegal immigrant arrests, says Immigration DG" https://www.nst.com.my/news/nation/2026/05/1449564/updated-public-concern-over-foreigners-persists-despite-17313-illegal

Summarised by JNT Manpower Solutions from the report cited above. Figures are as reported on that date.