MANILA — The Bureau of Immigration has deported and blacklisted two Americans who are registered sex offenders and who tried to enter the country over the holidays, the agency said Wednesday.

In a release, the bureau said 39-year-old Zachary Tyler Thompson and 46-year-old Paul Neal Coltharp were flagged at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport on separate days.

"Both aliens were immediately excluded and flown back to their port of origin. Their name have likewise been included in the BI blacklist of undesirable aliens," BI said.

Registered sex offenders and other convicts of crimes involving moral turpitude are barred from entering the country under the Immigration Act.

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BI said it "opened the new year" with the interception of Thompson, who was convicted in 2013 and in 2015 for possession of child sexual abuse material and for molesting a child. He flew in from Los Angeles.

BI also intercepted Coltharp, who had been convicted in California in 1998 for child molestation, as he arrived from Taipei last Dec. 27.

CHILD SEX TRAFFICKING IN PH

According to the US State Department's 2023 Trafficking in Persons Report on the Philippines, child sex trafficking is still "a pervasive problem", adding "many sex tourists in the Philippines are convicted or charged sex offenders or pedophiles in their home countries."

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Women and children in rural communities, especially those that have been affected by conflict or by calamities, are prone to exploitation, the report also notes.

That can include Online Sexual Abuse and Exploitation of Children, the report said.

"Law enforcement information indicates that the Philippines is one of the largest known sources of OSEC (Online Sexual Exploitation of Children), in which traffickers sexually exploit children...in live internet broadcasts in exchange for compensation," it also said.

Buyers of the content are usually in other countries, including the US, Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom.

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SaferKidsPH, an initiative of the Australian government, notes that OSAEC "is a hidden crime, unknown to many but experienced more and more by Filipino children in their own homes, in their own families, and communities."