As it takes over more of the duties of the police and prison officials, Rela is drawing the condemnation of local and foreign human rights groups, which accuse the volunteers, some as young as 16, of violence, extortion, theft and illegal detention.
"They break into migrant lodgings in the middle of the night without warrants, brutalize inhabitants, extort money and confiscate cellphones, clothing, jewelry and household goods, before handcuffing migrants and transporting them to detention camps for illegal immigrants," Human Rights Watch said in a report in May.
They often fail to honor legitimate documentation and sometimes destroy documents in order to justify their actions, the human rights group said.
In an interview, Rela's director general, Zaidon Asmuni, dismissed the concerns of human rights groups, saying that the nation's security is at stake and demands an aggressive defense.
"We have no more communists at the moment, but we are now facing illegal immigrants," he said. "As you know, in Malaysia illegal immigrants are enemy No. 2." Enemy No. 1, he said, is drugs.
Once undocumented migrants are detained, they face a jail term of up to five years and a whipping of up to six strokes.
Some of the migrants, like Kang Long from Myanmar, are refugees registered with the United Nations, but they are caught up in the sweeps as well. Malaysia is not a signatory of the UN refugee convention.
According to the accounts of a dozen migrants in the cramped apartments where t
