32 Students on Visit From China Vanish at Airport

Thirty-two visiting teenage students from China vanished from Los Angeles International Airport Monday, shortly before they were scheduled to board a jetliner for a return trip to their homeland.

“It appears to us that this is an organized attempt by them to remain here in the United States,” said Los Angeles Police Cmdr. Dave Kalish.

Officials said the 18 girls and 14 boys, ranging in age from 14 to 17, had been attending four weeks of instruction at the English Language Training Center at the University of Redlands in Redlands.

Police Lt. Anthony Alba said that with their courses completed, the Chinese students boarded a bus at Redlands on Monday that arrived at the airport’s Bradley Terminal at 11:30 a.m. Their flight was scheduled to depart for Shanghai at 1 p.m.

But Alba said the students were intercepted in front of the terminal by a group of Asian men.

“These men rounded up all the kids, and their luggage, and their passports, loaded them up into some vans and sports utility vehicles, and drove out of the airport,” Alba said. “There was no force. No fear. These kids went willingly.”

While police carefully avoided using the term, “defection,” they stuck to Kalish’s description of the event--”an organized attempt . . . to remain in the United States.”

Without going into further detail, Alba said that description was based on “the totality of the circumstances.”

Kalish said that--thus far, at least--none of the students is believed to have asked for asylum.

He said that the State Department and the Immigration and Naturalization Service had been notified, but for now the case is being handled by LAPD missing persons investigators. The FBI did not respond to requests for information about the case.

Todd Patterson, director of the training center, said the teenagers had been staying with host families in the Redlands area while attending classes.

“This was a good group of kids,” Patterson said. “Nothing went on that clued me that this sort of thing might occur. We’ve had students from China before, but nothing like this ever happened.”

Patterson said the students applied for the program in China and were accepted after they received student visas from a U.S. consulate there. He said they had come directly to Redlands for the language program and had not traveled elsewhere in the United States.

Asked where the disappearance apparently fit between defection and some sort of juvenile prank, Alba said he wasn’t sure, but it could be somewhere in between.

“But if they’re just down at Disneyland right now, they’d better be having a good time,” he said. “Because there’s going to be hell to pay.”