Undocumented migrants were arrested in large-scale exercises yesterday to prevent them from sneaking out of enhanced movement control order (MCO) areas, said national police chief Abdul Hamid Bador.
"We cannot allow them to move freely while the MCO is still enforced as it will be difficult for us to track them down if they leave identified locations.
"That is the main objective of (yesterday's) operations which we conducted at several locations in the capital," he told Bernama.
He said should undocumented migrants infected with Covid-19 from enhanced MCO areas move to a different location and start a new cluster, they would be difficult to track.
He said the detainees would be housed together until the MCO has been lifted and the government will decide what to do with them later.
Witnesses told Malaysiakini that the authorities went door-to-door in the Masjid India area in downtown Kuala Lumpur to look for undocumented migrants.
The area is under the enhanced MCO and hosts one major cluster of Covid-19 infections - 168 cases so far - in a building known as Selangor Mansion.
Critics of the mass detention exercise warned that the government risks increasing the spread of Covid-19 among detainees and discourage undocumented migrants with symptoms from coming forward. - Mkini
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