TWO Americans previously convicted of various sex crimes in the US were barred from entering the country by Bureau of Immigration (BI) personnel assigned at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) Terminal 1. Intercepted and turned back.
BI Commissioner Norman Tansingco identified the first passenger as Eric Blair Smith, 57, who arrived at the NAIA 1 terminal last Thursday via a Philippine Airlines (PAL) flight from Los Angeles, California.
Tansingco said Smith is a registered sex offender (RSO) in California where he was charged and convicted for sexual offenses on several occasions in 1986 and 2013.
“As in the case of other RSOs who have arrived in the country, he was also refused and booked on the first available PAL fight to Los Angeles where he came from,” Tansingco said.
According to US authorities which informed the BI about Smith’s impending arrival in Manila, the American was found guilty in 2013 of committing sexual battery by intimately touching the victim against the latter’s will.
Shortly before that, he also received a prison sentence for engaging in lewd and lascivious acts with a child under 14 years of age. Records further show that in 1986 Smith was found guilty of molesting a child under 18 years of age.
Also intercepted was another American RSO identified as Marlon Buniel, 57, who arrived on board a PAL flight from Honolulu last October 20. He was found guilty of sexual assault in the fourth degree and kidnapping in Hawaii in 2012.
The BI chief said that both Smith and Buniel were put in the immigration blacklist of undesirable aliens, perpetually banning them from entering the country.
Tansingco stressed that while attempts by alien sex offenders to enter the country continue, the BI officers at the premier airports are doubly vigilant against it.
