PORT ANGELES — A South Korean national arrested by the U.S. Border Patrol at the Port Angeles Farmers Market on Sept. 3 was apprehended “after receiving a citizen’s report of a suspicious person,” according to the agency’s Blaine Sector office.
Hung Han, 37, is being held by U.S. Customs & Immigration Enforcement at the ICE’s Tacoma Northwest Detention Center pending a deportation hearing before a federal immigration court in Seattle, ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice said this week.
A two-sentence description of Han’s arrest was added to a weekly report of Border Patrol arrests that has been provided since February to Bellingham media, Blaine Sector office spokesman Richard Sinks said this week.
The report, which consisted of Border Patrol arrests in Whatcom County, was made available to media at the request of citizens concerned about the Border Patrol’s presence in the Bellingham area, Sinks said.
The Peninsula Daily News had requested that the report include a similar accounting of arrests made by Border Patrol agents stationed in Port Angeles, which is part of the Blaine Sector and covers the North Olympic Peninsula.
The report does not include arrests that have led to active investigations, Sinks said.
Residents in Clallam and Jefferson counties have raised concerns and held demonstrations about stepped-up Border Patrol staffing and a new $5.7 million headquarters being built about two miles east of downtown Port Angeles.
At farmers market
Han was detained by Border Patrol agents at about 2:30 p.m. Sept. 3 while helping his parents pack up their produce stand at the Port Angeles Farmers Market.
“After receiving a citizen’s report of a suspicious person, agents apprehended a citizen of South Korea in Port Angeles,” the Border Patrol report said.
“Subject was found to be illegally present in the U.S. and was processed for removal.”
Han’s sister, Chong Han, told the Peninsula Daily News on Sept. 4 that her brother had been in the United States for six years and had not become a legal resident.
She would not comment Thursday on the case.
Forks jail
The list of apprehensions in the report also included a Mexican citizen taken into custody Aug. 30 at the Forks jail.
“The subject had been arrested in July for DUI and had also been previously ordered removed from the U.S. in 2005. Subject was processed for reinstatement of a prior deportation order,” the report said.
Four other arrests were cited in the report, all of which resulted in foreign nationals being processed for removal from the United States.
Taken into custody were a Sri Lanka citizen in Fairhaven, a Cuban citizen near Blaine, a Polish citizen near Blaine and a Mexican citizen by Quinault tribal police.
The Quinault reservation is mostly in Grays Harbor County, but a small portion is in Southwestern Jefferson County.
Further information about the arrests was not provided by the Border Patrol.
Christian Sanchez, a Border Patrol agent stationed in Port Angeles who has publicly criticized the agency for being overstaffed, told a government watchdog group earlier this summer that more than 40 agents operate out of Port Angeles in a number that is “still increasing.”
He likened his work to “a black hole, swallowing us up slowly, with no purpose, no mission.”
The number of Border Patrol agents in Port Angeles was 26 in April 2009, up from four in 2006.
The new Border Patrol headquarters at 110 S. Penn St., slated for completion in April, has a 50-agent capacity.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.