By Gillian Flaccus/AP
After repeated complaints about its treatment of foreigners, which earned the city the nickname “Deportland,” INS officials in Portland, Ore., are once again in the hot seat, this time for the alleged deportation of a Taoist minister.
Members of the Wu-Wei Tien Tao Association, an international religious group, have filed a federal lawsuit against the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, claiming that Kwai Fun Wong, the group’s leading spiritual leader, was wrongfully arrested and deported to Hong Kong without a hearing in June 1999. INS officials jailed Wong for five days, strip-searched her twice, and refused to provide her with a vegetarian diet before she was deported, said Eric Chen, the group’s spokesperson.
“She was forced to endure humiliation as if she was a criminal,” Chen said. “Many of our new members were confused by the situation. We suffered a significant loss of membership and donations.”
The lawsuit, filed May 18 in U.S. District Court in Portland, seeks unspecified damages and Wong’s return to the United States. The suit names former Portland INS district director David Beebe as a defendant.
Beebe retired under pressure last October after repeated complaints. A disproportionately large number of foreign travelers, mostly Asians, were deported, and sometimes jailed, simply because paperwork appeared questionable.
Wong came to the United States in 1992 to establish Taoism here and applied for resident status in 1992 and again in 1994 — but she was never told if the INS had ruled on those petitions, according to court documents.
In 1999, she returned to Hong Kong briefly for the funeral of another Taoist leader.
The San Francisco INS office allowed Wong to re-enter the country, but INS officials in Portland arrested her on June 17, 1999, when she reported to their office to pick up an employment card, said Tom Steenson, Wong’s attorney.
Steenson said the INS deported Wong under an immigration provision that did not apply to her case and did not allow a hearing that could have resolved the confusion.
“We believe she was treated differently from others,” he said.
Phillip Crawford, INS deputy district director, said he had received a copy of the complaint, but he declined to comment.
Chen said the religious association lost membership and money after Wong’s arrest because members doubted her legitimacy. Wong’s arrest also delayed the construction of a religious center in Houston for “several years” and caused membership in California, Florida, Canada and Taiwan to drop, he said. |
