EDITORIAL
August 24, 2000

Shake up the Portland INS

Our Patience is Exhausted With Portland Immigration Officials, Who Jailed A Woman With a Valid Passport

Time has run out for the embarrassing thugs and bumblers at the Immigration and Naturalization Service office in Portland.

In their latest outrage, they jailed a Chinese businesswoman, whose misfortune -- and only crime -- was to arrive at the Portland International Airport with a tattered passport.

Portland immigration inspectors deemed Guo Liming's passport "suspicious." They forced her to strip to her underwear, searched her, interrogated her, handcuffed her for transport to The Dalles and jailed her for two nights -- before concluding [how inconvenient for them] that her passport was valid.

"It's a Gestapo mentality," said an appalled Mike Thorne, head of the Port of Portland. "I don't know where these guys get off."

Thorne joined state Sen. Avel Gordly, D-Portland, Wednesday in calling for the resignation of David Beebe, head of the Portland INS office. "We're at the last straw," Thorne said. "I'm willing to burn the last bridge."

He's right. The time has elapsed for quiet interventions or reforms from within.

Consider the two "clues" Portland INS inspectors used to deduce that Liming's passport might be counterfeit.

* She made the mistake of traveling with another person -- her fiance and business partner, as it happens.

* The original clear plastic laminate on her passport had been peeled back.

Wear and tear on a passport is a proud badge of cosmopolitanism for many a traveler, but INS officials apparently believe that counterfeiters advertise their fakery with a visible sign of a clumsy job.

Isn't it more likely that a fake would be slick, new and not call attention to itself? Guo's passport, in any case, raised no eyebrows when she used it to enter the country last January in Los Angeles.

But then, that discrepancy epitomizes the whole, strange saga of the Portland INS office. The agency has made itself conspicuous on the West Coast -- and notorious in the Asian community -- by rejecting foreign travelers at a much higher rate than other West Coast airports do.

What makes this recent fiasco all the more dumbfounding is that airport immigration officials have been on notice for months that they are under scrutiny. They apparently remain oblivious, even to the intensifying drumbeat of criticism.

As we've said before, their callous treatment of Asian visitors is tarnishing Portland's reputation, jeopardizing international flights, and Pacific Rim commerce. A Port of Portland study estimated that $900 million worth of economic benefits are at stake if the flights disappear.

Port officials have been working for two years -- for a long time, quietly -- to change INS practices. In the last few months, immigration officials seemed to be waking up to the need for changes, and made a number of promises. For one thing, they said they would stop jailing foreign travelers in most cases and use guarded hotel rooms, instead. These promises are now shown to be worth nothing.

This is a federal agency that, in Portland at least, is out of control. That can't continue. Sens. Ron Wyden and Gordon Smith must demand new leadership and insist that the agency clean house.