Philippines Arrests 244 Foreigners in Largest POGO Raid of 2026, Nearly Two Years After the Ban

Immigration officers, the National Bureau of Investigation and the army raided two sites in Zamboanga Sibugay on 2 October and found some 3,000 mobile phones. The Bureau of Immigration calls it this year's biggest offshore gaming bust, which says as much about the ban as about the raid.

• The Bureau of Immigration (BI) arrested 244 foreign nationals, most of them Chinese, in simultaneous raids on suspected offshore gaming sites in Siay and Alicia, Zamboanga Sibugay, on 2 October, which it describes as its largest POGO bust of 2026
• Officers recovered about 3,000 mobile phones, 78 computer monitors, laptops and SIM cards from a pension house compound, equipment the bureau says is believed to have been used for online scams
• The detainees face deportation for alleged immigration violations, including working without the proper visa, and the BI says it is coordinating with other agencies on possible human trafficking offences
• The raids were carried out under the 2024 executive order banning Philippine offshore gaming operators and the Anti-POGO Act of 2025, which permanently revoked every POGO licence in the Philippines
• The case is another reminder for PAGCOR and its licensed online operators, who are pressing for a statute to secure the domestic market while bills to ban online gambling outright remain filed

Two Simultaneous Raids in Southern Mindanao

The Bureau of Immigration's Intelligence Division, working with the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), raided sites in Barangay Kimos in the town of Siay and Barangay Tandiong Muslim in Alicia, both in Zamboanga Sibugay province, on Friday 2 October, according to a statement the bureau published on 3 October. The Philippine Army said the operation followed intelligence gathering and inter-agency coordination, with Joint Task Force ZAMPELAN providing security, according to the Daily Tribune.

In Siay, the bureau said, its teams apprehended 113 foreign nationals: 110 Chinese, two Cambodians and one national of Hong Kong. In Alicia they apprehended 131, mostly Chinese, with nationals of Malaysia, Indonesia and Myanmar. The BI says the identities and nationalities of those detained remain subject to verification by its Alien Registration Division. From the Casa de Coco Pension House compound in Siay, according to Rappler, officers recovered 78 computer monitors, roughly 3,000 mobile phones, laptops and SIM cards, together with what the bureau described as a significant number of devices "believed to have been utilized for online scams, revealing an organized illegal online operation at the site".

The detainees are being investigated for working without the proper visa in breach of the conditions of their admission, under Section 37(a)(7) of the Philippine Immigration Act, for undesirability because of their alleged involvement in illegal POGO-related online activities, for being undocumented and, in some cases, for illegal entry. They will undergo deportation proceedings, and anyone ordered deported will be blacklisted from re-entering the country. The bureau said it was coordinating with other law enforcement agencies on possible human trafficking violations, adding that any determination of trafficking offences remains subject to investigation by the appropriate authorities.

"The Bureau of Immigration is firmly implementing the government's policy against illegal POGO operations," BI Commissioner Joel Anthony Viado said. "We will continue to enforce our immigration laws against foreign nationals who violate the conditions of their stay and ensure that the Philippines is not used as a base for illegal activities."

The Ban Behind the Raids

The BI described the raids as enforcement of Executive Order No. 74 of 2024, which ordered the immediate ban on POGO operations after President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. announced it in his July 2024 State of the Nation Address, and of Republic Act No. 12312, the Anti-POGO Act of 2025. The Act prohibits conducting or offering offshore gaming, permanently revokes every POGO licence previously issued by the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (PAGCOR) and economic zone authorities, cancels industry visas and work permits, and makes violations a predicate offence for money laundering. A first offence carries six to eight years in prison, rising to up to 12 years and fines of up to P50 million (approximately $810,000) for a third. Foreign officers of an offending company are to be deported after serving their sentence.

The ban has produced some of the country's most closely followed prosecutions. A Pasig court sentenced former Bamban mayor Alice Guo to life imprisonment in November 2025 for trafficking under the guise of POGO operations, while the trafficking case over the Lucky South 99 hub in Porac, Pampanga, is still waiting on former presidential spokesperson Harry Roque, whose Austrian asylum bid remains unresolved. Roque denies the charges.

The Word POGO Now Describes What Was Never Licensed

Nothing in the BI's account suggests the Zamboanga Sibugay sites were ever licensed offshore gaming operators. What it describes is a compound in a pension house with roughly 3,000 phones and 78 monitors, equipment it believes was used for online scams, staffed largely by foreign nationals now under investigation for immigration offences and possible trafficking. That matches the pattern the Guo court found at Bamban, where the businesses were fronts for fraud rather than gaming. "POGO" has become the enforcement label for scam compounds that borrow the language of online gaming, and that matters to the licensed industry. Every headline that pairs gaming with trafficking and fraud strengthens the hand of senators who have filed bills to ban domestic online gambling as well, which is part of why PAGCOR chairman Alejandro Tengco wants the licensed market set out in statute.

Deportation Is Fast, but It Does Not Reach the Operators

The bureau's tools are administrative: the 244 face deportation and blacklisting for immigration violations, which removes the workers but does not by itself identify who financed, ran or protected the site. The Anti-POGO Act's prison terms, its money laundering provisions and civil forfeiture of equipment are aimed at the people behind such operations, and the BI has not said whether anyone will be charged under it. The Act, signed in October 2025, also requires an oversight committee to report to the President and Congress on implementation no later than a year after it took effect, a deadline that falls late this year. That report should show how many cases under the Act have reached court, not just how many foreigners have been detained.

The Raid Points to Dispersal, Not Disappearance

A raid of this size in a Mindanao province, far from the Metro Manila and central Luzon hubs of the licensed era, suggests that some of the operations which survived the ban have moved to where enforcement is thinner, although one raid cannot prove a trend. Raids "have continued despite the ban", as Rappler noted, and the BI's own description of this one as the largest of the year implies a steady flow of smaller ones. The wider region is moving at the same time: Cambodia says 24 of its casinos have shut down online gambling as it tightens its own crackdown. Pressure in one country tends to move these operations to the next, and a ban enforced through immigration raids tests a government's reach into remote provinces as much as its resolve.

The Philippines banned offshore gaming nearly two years ago and is still finding it, now on the far side of the archipelago. The measure of the ban will be how many of these raids end with an operator in court, not a planeload of deportees.