PHNOM PENH, Jan. 3 (FN) — Cambodia deported 3,376 illegal foreigners, including 738 females, to their birth countries in 2016, a senior immigration police official said Tuesday.

The illegal immigrants of 63 nationalities had been arrested and expelled from Cambodia last year after they lived and worked here without passports or valid visas, Major General Uk Heisela, chief of the investigation department of the General Department of Immigration (GDI), told Xinhua.

"Some 2,453 (or 72 percent) of them are Vietnamese," he said. According to the official, since the establishment of the GDI in April 2014 until the end of 2016, Cambodia had deported a total of 11,661 illegal immigrants of 72 nationalities, 84 percent of them are Vietnamese.

Under the kingdom's immigration law, any alien living in the country without valid documents such as passports, visas, or work permits are subject to deportation.