Thai authorities in Bangkok have arrested 51 Pakistani Christian asylum seekers in an incident that has reignited fears among the city’s Christian refugees of another immigration crack-down on illegal immigrants.

According to eyewitnesses, immigration authorities arriving in two police vans pulled up outside a low-rent apartment building in Bearing Soi 7 in eastern Bangkok where several Pakistani Christian families had been hiding out after having overstayed their tourist visas to Thailand.

Likely acting on a tip off from a disgruntled local, immigration police knocked on selected doors around 7 a.m. on July 8. When the fearful residents failed to respond, officers battered the doors down with hammers.

They then proceeded to round up entire families and take them to Bangkok’s notorious Immigration Detention Centre where inmates languish, often indefinitely, in squalid and overcrowded cells.

“They took everyone — men, women, old people, young children,” a Pakistani Christian asylum seeker who was privy to the incident via a phone connection told ucanews.com. “They even took sick old people who can’t walk anymore.”

When several Christian asylum seekers seemed reluctant to leave the apartments, immigration officers allegedly manhandled them, including mothers in front of their crying children.

“The officers roughed up some people, even women,” a Pakistani Christian told ucanews.com. “They took some of my friends. I’m very concerned about them.”

As evidence of the incident, Pakistani Christians showed off images, taken with mobile phones, of plywood doors bashed in and numerous Pakistani refugees, including a distraught elderly woman, being taken away in police vans.