Six Men, Forged Papers, and the Next Steamer Out
Federal officers in 1895 Seattle ordered six Chinese immigrants deported; four were jailed after entering on bogus certificates, and one tried to bribe a deputy rather than wait for the ship.
Chinese with bogus certificates are in bad luck in this city just at present. Those recently arrested by United States officers for being illegally in the country—six in all—have been ordered deported. Four orders of deportation were signed yesterday. Wong Ah Linn and Wong Chung, Ah Tick and Ah Tuck were brought from Tacoma early in the morning. These four are the ones who entered the country with forged certificates. Wong Ah Linn and Wong Chung were taken to the county jail, where they will remain until the ten days allowed for an appeal shall have expired. They do not care to wait, but seem eager for the next steamer. One of them took a hopeful view of the situation and even offered a bribe to the deputy in charge of him to secure his release. Ah Tuck will not be deported immediately, for an order was made that execution be suspended and he be held to await the action of the United States grand jury, which will act upon a criminal charge against him. One or two other Chinese, including a former cook on the steamer and 'Soy John,' were taken to Tacoma. The Chinese in Tacoma are very anxious and would give a great deal to escape their present predicament. They do not like the fact of having paid for certificates that have proved not only worthless but the cause of deportation, and would prefer to return to their own country even if it meant giving up the money they paid.
“They do not care to wait, but seem eager for the next steamer.”
This 1895 case turned on paperwork—forged certificates—and the threat of deportation, a precursor to the documentary-status enforcement that still shapes immigrant lives. The men's eagerness for the next steamer, and one man's attempted bribe, show how quickly exclusion law became a personal emergency. It belongs to the long anti-Chinese history that had already produced the 1885-86 expulsions and would continue through the exclusion era.
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