12 Chinese nationals arrested in South C, Nairobi for running a brothel (Photos)

Some of the Chinese nationals arrested in South C, Nairobi.

Twelve Chinese nationals were Wednesday arrested from brothels in Nairobi’s South C area for engaging in prostitution.

The foreigners are said to have been engaged in the business without work permits.

Police and immigration officials said they had been tipped off over the activities at the brothels before they staged a raid there.

Among those arrested were eight women and four men.

Director of Immigration Services Alex Muteshi said two of them were on their watch list.

“They will be deported. We have processed the papers for the exercise and they will leave the country,” he said.

The two were on watch list on suspicion of being involved in prostitution and illegal gambling.

The incident comes at a time when the government is engaged in operations to kick out illegal immigrants.

Some of those targeted had come to the country as tourists but ventured into the business.

The Immigration Department is processing them for deportation.

More than 2,000 foreigners have been deported from Kenya in the past month alone, in one of the boldest crackdowns aimed at streamlining the corruption-prone process of issuing work permits in the country.

Officials said more illegal foreign workers will be deported over the next three months after an investigation exposed the dirty tricks they used to gain entry into the country.

The workers claimed to have found work even though they did not possess not only genuine job papers but also qualifications.

Already, 30 civil servants have been sacked after they were implicated in the saga, which is said to have allowed some dangerous criminals to hide in the country.

More than 60 managers of high-end hotels, businessmen and experts have also been deported after they sneaked into the country in questionable circumstances.

Foreigners seeking to come to work in Kenya now have to apply for permits while in their home countries before they obtain visas to travel.

A hard copy of the 173-page register has been dispatched to all police stations in the country to ease the process of identifying foreigners allowed to work in the country.

Chinese nationals were Wednesday arrested from brothels in Nairobi’s South C

Documents show some of the foreigners sneaked into the country as tourists when, indeed, they were using the country to hide from law enforcement agencies like Interpol.

Others were fugitives who were avoiding dragnets back home over various crimes such as terrorism, murder and theft.

Figures show that most of the illegal immigrants were keen to stay in cosmopolitan areas, where they can easily go unnoticed because of the heterogeneity of the people.

Preparations for the crackdown was started by a three-month permit verification exercise that interior Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang'i started on May 21, 2018 and ended on July 21, 2018.

The exercise was meant to screen a total of 33,022 permits that had been issued between July 2016 and June 2018. Some 26,829 permits were verified indicating 6,193 permits could not be traced.

Leading nationalities in the cases include Nigerians, Chinese Congolese, South Sudanese, Tanzanians and Ethiopians.