Surrogacy is illegal in Cambodia, but agencies continue to offer the service.
This case was unusual because surrogates usually work in their own countries rather than being transported to other countries.
The women were found during a police raid on a villa near the capital Phnom Penh on September 23.
After their arrest, Nicholas Felix Tay, the Philippines’ deputy justice secretary, said the women themselves had become “victims of human trafficking.”
But Cambodia’s interior minister, Chow Boon Eng, rejected the idea and said he believed the women were responsible.
Four Vietnamese women and another seven Filipinas were also caught but were not pregnant so were deported, Boon Eng said.
A Cambodian woman has been jailed for two months and one day for acting as an accomplice by cooking food for her mother, a court has heard.
Developing countries are popular for surrogacy because the cost is much lower.
Cambodia’s commercial surrogacy industry took off in 2016 after the practice was outlawed in neighboring Thailand.
Although the Cambodian government banned it later that year, it continued to thrive.
The AFP news agency reported that Chinese couples would pay agencies between $40,000 (£31,600) and $100,000 (£79,000) for a Cambodian woman to carry their child.
In 2017 an Australian nurse who ran a surrogacy clinic was imprisoned for 18 months in Cambodia.
next year, In Cambodia, 32 surrogate mothers are accused of human trafficking were released on the condition that they raise their children themselves.
