The International Herald Tribune highlights the plight of illegal immigrants in Malaysia.  About 1.5 million illegal immigrants are living in Malaysia and face harsh treatment from a volunteer force of immigration enforcement.

After being arrested, the illegal immigrants are deported into the hands of traffickers, according to the report.

According to the accounts of a dozen migrants in the cramped apartments where they hide, things can get even worse once they are deported.

After serving time in a detention center, they say, many are taken to a no man’s land near the border with Thailand where human traffickers await their arrival.

If they can pay 1,500 ringgit, or about $450, the migrants say, the traffickers will smuggle them back to Kuala Lumpur where the cycle of harassment, potential detention and deportation begins again.

If they cannot pay, the migrants say, they may be sold as laborers to fishing boats or forced into the sex trade. Some return years later, the migrants say. Others simply disappear.

Irene Fernandez, a Malaysian who heads a local migrants’ rights group called Tenaganita, said victims sometimes call from the border begging for money to pay the traffickers.

“It’s a conflict for us because we cannot support any form of trafficking,” she said. “At the same time, protection of life is equally important.”

The best she can honorably do, she said, is to notify the immigrant communities in Kuala Lumpur, where people barely have enough money to feed themselves, and hope they can find the means to save their friends.

The illicit market in Malaysia is listed at $559 Million.