The Shadowy Arrival at Port Townsend
Federal authorities intercept two young Chinese men smuggled into Washington Territory as 'contraband,' exposing the illicit human trafficking trade operating under the noses of border officials.
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.
United States Attorney White applied to the Court on Wednesday for an order to send the two China boys, Ah Yek and Ah Wahy, alleged to have been brought to Port Townsend from British Columbia on the K. M. Anderson, back again. The Court appointed J. H. Lewis to appear for the boys. H. F. Beecher, the complaining witness, testified: 'I am Collector of the Puget Sound District. On Thursday, October 22, I received information from Victoria that there would be contraband Chinamen on the Anderson on their way here. I boarded the Wolcott and went to Victoria. The Anderson left at 2 o’clock the next morning for Port Townsend. We followed her. On our arrival at Port Townsend, we found the Anderson just making fast to the dock. I sent the crew on board to make a search, and they returned with the two China boys. I took the boys on the cutter and returned with them to Victoria, but the authorities over there refused to receive them.'
Barrett, a fireman on the Wolcott, testified: 'I searched the Anderson and found these two China boys secreted in the hold, next to the water tanks, by the coal bunkers. I put them on deck and turned them over to the officers.' Lieutenant Males testified: 'I saw these China boys when I went into the bunkers on the Anderson, on the port side, in the hold of the vessel.' After hearing this testimony, the Judge said: 'Let Ah Yek and Ah Wahy be committed to the custody of the United States Marshal, to be taken to the port from which they came.'
“I searched the Anderson and found these two China boys secreted in the hold, next to the water tanks, by the coal bunkers.”
This report captures the era of the Chinese Exclusion Act, when the state’s borders were sites of intense surveillance and racialized policing. It mirrors today's ongoing, often fraught, discourse regarding immigration enforcement and the human cost of border control policies in the Pacific Northwest.
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