Border Smuggling Crisis
Revenue officers report nearly one hundred Chinese laborers crossing the northern frontier by boat as current enforcement resources prove inadequate.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
WASHINGTON, Aug. 8.—The acting Secretary of the Treasury today received a telegram from the Collector of Customs at Port Townsend, W. T., stating that officers of the revenue steamer Wolcott had captured a sloop engaged in running Chinese across the line from British Columbia. Two smugglers were arrested, but nine Chinese passengers escaped. The Collector also stated that nearly one hundred Chinamen had landed at various points on the northern frontier in boats and Indian canoes within the last few days, and that he is powerless to prevent this unless his force is largely increased. The law provides that no Chinese laborers be permitted to enter the United States by land without producing the certificates required from Chinese laborers seeking to land from vessels, and that any Chinese found unlawfully within the United States shall be removed therefrom after being brought before a justice, judge, or Commissioner.
“The Collector also stated that nearly one hundred Chinamen had landed at various points on the northern frontier... and that he is powerless to prevent this unless his force is largely increased.”
This report highlights the early, aggressive application of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 in Washington Territory, setting the stage for the violent expulsions that would consume Seattle in 1885-86. It documents the federal government's struggle to control the vast, porous border of the Salish Sea, a tension that persists in regional debates over immigration and enforcement today.
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