Senate deputy minority leader Risa Hontiveros on Tuesday, March 4, warned the Bureau of Immigration (BI) that she will press for a total revamp of the agency, starting from its commissioner, if the agency continues to fail to provide answers on the mystery of how former Bamban, Tarlac mayor Alice Guo and her siblings managed to escape the Philippines.

This, after BI Intelligence Division chief Fortunato Manahan, admitted that the agency is still clueless about how Guo, also known as Guo Hua Ping, and her siblings were able to flee the country at the height of Congress’ investigation into her involvement in the illegal Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators (POGO) hub in Bamban.

This revelation dismayed Hontiveros, leading her to issue an ultimatum to the BI.

“To (BI) Commissioner (Joel) Viado, of the Bureau of Immigration, with all due respect, please consider this an ultimatum,” Hontiveros said during the Senate subpanel’s hearing on the issue. 

“If no satisfactory answers on these matters are provided by the BI within 15 days—as designated chair of the 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 stressed.

Hontiveros said it is unacceptable that a high-profile fugitive was able to escape the country and the agency that should have been investigating it seems to be only waiting for answers from their counterparts from other countries. 

“Even more concerning—the President himself declared that ‘heads will roll’ because of Guo’s escape. Yet BI’s response to this committee seems to me there was no internal investigation done by the agency to ascertain who were responsible or if Guo was able to leave with the help of anyone from its ranks,” she lamented.

Hontiveros also pointed out that it has been four months since the Guos escaped but the BI could also not identify at what port or coast in the Philippines did the siblings, Alice, Shiela and Wesley Guo, managed to go to following their claim of daring to escape by sea.

“Because if we just stop at this status, we’re inutile as a country. It’s been four months, and we still don’t know how fugitives managed to slip past our borders undetected?“ she said.

Hontiveros addressed her frustrations to BI Intelligence Division chief Fortunato Manahan. Viado was not present during the hearing.

“You can imagine the frustration that the whole committee and the Senate would feel in this kind of situation where we still haven’t solved it—it shouldn’t even be a mystery; it should be a simple matter of fact that we should have already figured out by now. This is very regrettable,” said Hontiveros.

It could be recalled that in October 2024, Viado told senators during the hearing that based on the BI’s preliminary findings, Alice Guo and her cohorts fled the country to Malaysia by air.

But during the October hearing, Senate President Pro Tempore Jinggoy Estrada had asked the BI if it was certain that Guo had indeed left the country for Malaysia by air.

This is because the Guo siblings said they boarded multiple boats going to Malaysia. But Viado insisted that if they went to Malaysia by sea, they must have been through Sabah, but there were no record of entry of the siblings into Sabah on July 19, 2024, the date they supposedly arrived in Malaysia.

But at that time, Hontiveros presented documents that showed there was a Sabah stamp on Guo and her cohorts passports but it was proven to be fake.