US deports alleged Pinoy human rights violator


Immigration authorities in the United States has deported a Filipino who admitted to doing surveillance for a law enforcement task force in the Philippines linked to the disappearance of several opposition politicians.
Regor Cadag Aguilar, 42, was arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel in Union City in January last year for overstaying, the agency said in a news release.
Prior to his deportation on Wednesday last week, Aguilar said he had worked as a surveillance agent for a law enforcement task force in the Philippines targeting rival political figures from 1998 to 2001.
During removal proceedings initiated by the ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO), he said his superiors told him that the task force used the information he shared to "abduct and murder" a politician in 2000.
Aguilar also said he heard superiors order other task force members to torture abductees "on at least two occasions."
He further claimed he knew that one of his surveillance targets "disappeared and was presumed dead" as early as 1998.
Despite this, the Filipino insisted that he didn't know the extent of the task force's illegal activities during his employment.
ICE Deputy Director Daniel Ragsdale said the removal had been in the making "for more than a decade" as Aguilar's visa expired 15 years ago.
Aguilar petitioned a review of the Board of Immigration Appeals' decision on his and his wife's petition for asylum in 2015.
The court denied the appeal on the grounds that he failed to "demonstrate that it is more likely than not he will be tortured upon return" and that he "participated in persecution" of the task force's victims.
The PAOCTF is implicated in the unsolved murder of publicist Salvador "Bubby" Dacer and his driver Emmanuel Corbito, who were allegedly abducted, strangled, and burned to death by members of the task force in 2000. —Rie Takumi/KBK, GMA News

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