Russian authorities have expelled 46 more illegal Vietnamese immigrants, the third group after previously sending 55 people back to Vietnam.

>> 31 illegal Vietnamese immigrants return home The 46 immigrants left the Russian capital of Moscow for their home country on August 17. Russian police sent two groups of 31 and 24 people back to Vietnam on August 10 and 15, respectively. They were among roughly 600 Vietnamese people arrested by Russian police during a July 31 raid targeting illegal migrants working at garment workshops in a market east of the capital. About 1,000 foreign workers were captured during the raid. The remaining Vietnamese citizens will be deported in the coming days. The Vietnamese Embassy in Russia has sent a working group to the temporary detention site, a tent camp in Moscow, to deal with any problems related to sending the Vietnamese home. The Embassy also set up a hotline at +7 903 682 1617 to receive any information related to the detainees. The agency also asked relatives of the detainees to submit all personal papers of the detainees soon. Since the raid some Vietnamese communities in Russia have sent voluntary translators to the camp and raised funds for the illegal migrants to return home. Federal Migration Service chief Konstantin Romodanovsky told RIA Novosti in late July that about 3 million of the 11.3 million foreigners who have entered Russia in 2013 work there illegally.

Russian police periodically raid underground operations in which migrants from Vietnam and Central Asia live in appalling conditions and are exploited by employers, but police themselves are notorious for extorting bribes from such migrants, AFP reported.