THE UNCHECKED ROUTE (Part 3)

June 29, 2026 • BY MARK MORALES

Why Northern Iloilo? Fish Ports, RORO Access, and a 3-Kilometer Gap

by Mark Morales

NORTHERN ILOILO — Of the 23 major shabu seizures in Iloilo's 4th and 5th districts since 2022, 19 happened within 3 kilometers of a municipal fish port. None happened inside a port.

That's not coincidence. It's geography.

Northern Iloilo — the towns of Estancia, Balasan, Carles, Batad, and Concepcion — sits at the end of the RORO highway from Luzon. It has three things traffickers need: daily RORO service from Mindoro, dozens of unmonitored municipal fish ports, and a road network that connects to Iloilo City in under three hours.

It also has something law enforcement doesn't: a port scanner.

The data pattern

Using PNP-PRO6 and PDEA-6 press releases from 2022-2026, the seizures cluster in one corridor:

19 of 23 major seizures (over P500,000) occurred in the coastal towns facing the Visayan Sea
Average distance from nearest port: 1.8 kilometers
Time of seizure: 78% occurred between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. — the window when RORO vessels from Caticlan and Mindoro unload
Method: In every press release, police describe "surveillance" and "buy-bust," never "port interdiction"

Compare that to Iloilo City, which has the region's only PDEA seaport office and regular Coast Guard patrols: just 4 major seizures in the same period, all from courier operations, not port landings.

Why fish ports matter

PPA only controls "commercial ports" — Dumangas, Iloilo City, Caticlan. Municipal fish ports are run by the LGU. According to the PPA's own port directory, northern Iloilo has 11 registered municipal ports and at least 23 unregistered landing sites used by pump boats and small cargo bancas.

None have:

X-ray machines
Permanent PDEA presence
K9 units (the nearest K9 is in Iloilo City, 2.5 hours away)
CCTV linked to the SIADITG-6 operations center

What they do have is daily fish deliveries from Estancia to Manila — and return trips with ice, fuel, and cargo that is never opened.

A 2023 PDEA-6 accomplishment report notes that its "Seaport Interdiction Unit conducted information drives for fisherfolk in Concepcion." The same report lists zero port seizures in northern Iloilo that year.

The 3-kilometer gap

Police don't catch shipments at the port because they can't. The process is:

RORO unloads at Caticlan or Dumangas (no scan)
Truck drives to northern Iloilo (no highway checkpoint with x-ray)
Cargo transfers to a fish port or private warehouse
PDEA/PNP, after weeks of surveillance, conduct a buy-bust 1-3 km inland

That gap — between the port and the bust — is where the risk is lowest for traffickers and highest for communities.

The February 2026 P14 million seizure is typical: PDEA said the drugs "originated from Manila" and were tracked for "nearly four months." They were not intercepted at Batangas, Calapan, Roxas, Caticlan, or Dumangas. They were intercepted in a house.

Not a new route

This isn't new. A 2019 PDEA briefing to the Iloilo Provincial Peace and Order Council — the same year SIADITG-6 was created — already identified "northern Iloilo fish ports as possible entry points." The solution proposed then: "enhanced monitoring."

Six years later, the monitoring is still a logbook.

What the numbers don't show

This series is based only on public seizures. It does not estimate how much gets through. But the pattern is clear: traffickers use the same infrastructure as legitimate fish traders because that infrastructure has no scanner.

Until a vehicle x-ray is installed at Caticlan, Dumangas, or at minimum at the northern Iloilo consolidation points, the seizures will continue to happen in barangay halls, not at ports.

Next: Part 4 — "Four Months of Watching: How PDEA Really Works" — inside the surveillance teams that make up for the lack of port security.

Sources Part 3:

PNP-PRO6 and PDEA-6 press releases, 2022-2026 (23 seizures over P500k)
PPA Port Directory 2024 — municipal vs commercial port classification
PDEA-6 2023 Accomplishment Report — fisherfolk symposiums, zero port seizures
Iloilo PPOC minutes 2019 — identification of northern fish ports as risk areas
Distance analysis using Google Maps port-to-seizure locations from police reports