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Hontiveros recommends revamp in BI: Deputy Minority Leader Risa Hontiveros presides over the continuation of the Committee on Justice and Human Rights public hearing on Tuesday, March 4, 2025, on her privilege speech urging the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) to cancel Alice Guo’s Philippine passport. Hontiveros said she will recommend a top to bottom revamp of the Bureau of Immigration which failed to watch the country’s porous borders, allowing “bad actors,” including Chinese spies, to enter the country. “On the other side, it allows the unfettered flight of fugitives (like Go) and the continued victimization of our fellow Filipinos,” the senator said. “This is about accountability — accountability for Alice Guo’s escape, but also in a larger sense, accountability for our failure to keep our borders safe and protect Filipinos,” she said, as she called for a revamp of the BI, starting with Commissioner Joel Anthony Viado. “To Commissioner Viado of the Bureau of Immigration, with all due respect, please consider this an ultimatum. If no satisfactory answers on these matters are provided by the BI within 15 days, as designated chair of this Subcommittee of the Committee of Justice, I will call for a revamp of the BI in the committee report of this subcommittee. A revamp starting from the Commissioner himself,” she said in her closing statement. (Senate Public Relations and Information Bureau)