Son Says Intent in Suing INS Is to Give Value to Mother’s Death

Steven Hwang says he was puzzled by the announcement over the public address system. He was at Los Angeles International Airport to pick up his mother, who was returning after nearly a year in Taiwan.

“Paging Dr. Hwang. Dr. Hwang. Paging Dr. Hwang.”

Hwang, an orthopedic surgeon from Tustin, did not know that his mother, Chen Seu-Ing Hwang, 66, of Santa Ana, had collapsed, allegedly while she was being questioned by an immigration officer.

Confused by the page, Hwang ran to a counter and was told he was wanted inside the airport’s customs area. When he finally reached his mother on that September day in 1987, she was lying on the floor. According to attending physicians at a hospital where she was later taken, she had suffered a stroke. She died on Oct. 22, 1987, a few weeks later.

“I spoke to her and found out she could not move one side of her body,” Hwang said in an interview Monday about his mother’s condition when he found her at the airport. “I lifted her arm, and then her leg. But she said she couldn’t feel anything.”

Charges in Suit

Last week, Hwang--the eldest of six children--filed a $3-million wrongful death suit in U.S. District Court against the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service and Inspector Craig Porter. The suit charges that the stroke Chen Seu-Ing Hwang suffered was the result of undue harassment by Porter, who had been questioning her as she stood with other passengers attempting to clear Customs.

Hwang contends that some immigration officers are overly aggressive when they question immigrants, Asians in particular, seeking re-entry into the United States.

“I didn’t sue for the money,” said Hwang, 46. “My suit is a way to give some value to my mother’s misfortune.”

Virginia Kice, an INS spokeswoman at the agency’s regional office in Laguna Niguel, said she could not comment on the lawsuit, but she dismissed Hwang’s accusations about anti-Asian bias among immigration officers.

“Certainly those allegations are entirely unfounded and completely without basis,” Kice said. “Anyone who leaves the United States and is returning from a foreign destination is subject to an inspection under the law.” She said INS officials conduct the inspections “fairly, impartially and we do not discriminate against any nationality.”

Porter could not be reached for comment.

‘Numerous Complaints’

Linda Wong, an immigration attorney formerly with the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund in Los Angeles, said some permanent residents have had problems with airport immigration inspectors.

“There’ve been numerous complaints of agents trying to entrap immigrants, in getting them to say they’ve been out of the country so long that they’ve abandoned their residency here,” Wong said. “Actually, it doesn’t matter where, because we’ve received complaints of agents at the U.S.-Mexico border and at the airport.”

Mrs. Hwang, who had been a legal resident of the United States since 1983, arrived at LAX on Sept. 17, 1987, on a flight from Taipei, Taiwan, after a stay of not quite a year, according to the suit.

Hwang said his mother had intended to stay in Taiwan only long enough for his father, who had traveled there separately, to undergo an eye operation. However, his father suffered chest pains after the surgery, then underwent a heart bypass operation and died.

Note for Officials

His mother had brought a note, written in broken English by a relative, to show to officials at Customs to help explain the circumstances of her stay. Briefly, the note said that her husband had died during the bypass operation and that she had remained in Taiwan to take care of his funeral, estate and other business affairs.

The note said in part: “As I am not well conversant with English please pardon me and forgive me for any lapse on my part. . . . I am Hwang Chen Seuing. I am sory to inform that my husband Bung En Hwang died on the 6th of November 1986 under and operation. Owing to this sudden bereavement I have to postpone all my affairs.”

In addition to the note, Hwang said, his mother was carrying her husband’s death certificate and the airline ticket, with an October, 1986, date on it, that she had used to fly from Los Angeles to Taiwan.

“I was told by a Japanese airline employee who interpreted for my mother that the agent tried to get my mother to admit she was out of the United States longer than 12 months,” Hwang said, “and that if she went back to Taiwan, he would confiscate her green card.”

Hwang said he was able to speak with his mother only briefly after she suffered the stroke. He said he learned about the interrogation from the airline employee, whom he declined to identify.

In 1987, after his mother’s death, a letter by Hwang was published in the China Post, a Taiwan newspaper, complaining about what Hwang called anti-Asian sentiments harbored by immigration agents at the Los Angeles airport and issuing a warning: “My position (is) to alarm all Asian-Americans and those who plan to come to the United States from Asia, (about) the dehumanization nature of INS and its growing tendency in discrimination against Asian elders, so that you or your loved ones (will) be prepared mentally. Never again should this kind of tragedy occur in the custom area at L.A. International Airport.” A U.S. official visiting abroad saw the article and called for an investigation.

In March, Hwang said, he was visited by an INS investigator who asked whether he had been present during his mother’s immigration examination at the airport. Hwang said that after he replied that he had not, the investigator left.

‘Mother Was Confused’

“My mother was confused,” Hwang contends. “She could have said ‘Yes’ to any of the agent’s questions. But if she did, she probably was too scared or too confused to understand.”

According to attorney Wong, permanent-resident aliens must take certain steps so as not to jeopardize their status as legal residents when they are out of the United States for more than 30 days. A resident alien forfeits his or her permit, or “green card,” if he or she is abroad 12 months or longer without a reasonable explanation.

“But at issue here is,” Wong said, “was the immigration officer making a genuine attempt to determine what the reason for her long absence was? And whether there are sufficient facts to support the immigrant’s contention that she never abandoned her permanent residency in the United States.”