Border guard officers in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta detected a total of 11 people illegally crossing the border from Cambodia in two separate cases on Tuesday evening.

Colonel Tran Quoc Khanh, deputy chief of the Border Guard Command in An Giang Province, confirmed the cases on Wednesday.

In the first case, border guard officers spotted a seven-seater automobile with suspicious signs on the provincial highway No. 957 in Phu Hoi Commune, An Phu District and decided to pull the vehicle over for an inspection.

Six people in the car, who were all Vietnamese citizens aged from 24 to 34, later admitted to having entered the country against the law.

Each of them was slapped with a VND4 million (US$173) fine and sent to a facility for mandatory 14-day quarantine in accordance with Vietnam’s regulations on novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) prevention and control.

In the second case, a group of four Vietnamese nationals and a Cambodian woman were caught crossing the border unlawfully from Cambodia.

The four Vietnamese citizens were fined VND4 million each and brought to a quarantine facility.

The Cambodian woman was sent back to her home country.

More than 300 people have been caught entering Vietnam illegally since the beginning of the COVID-19 epidemic in January, said Col. Khanh.

In accordance with Vietnamese law, entering the country without going through immigration procedures is punishable by a VND3-5 million ($130-215) fine.

Anyone dodging mandatory quarantine shall be fined VND5-10 million ($215-430).

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