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| HUMAN CARGO | |
 April 18, 2000 
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MIKE JAMES: The contraband aboard this rusting freighter, the "Wung Fung Lung," is human cargo. Dozens of illegal Chinese immigrants try to reach the gold mountains, the United States. The U.S. Coast guard seized the ship in early December as it drifted in the Eastern Pacific off the coast of Guatemala. On the decks they found dozens of Chinese, men and women, in squalid conditions without bedding or sanitation facilities. The smugglers set fires, tried to sink the ship, and fought with boarding officers. Coast guard commanders say it's part of an increasing pattern of violence. REAR ADM. TERRY CROSS, Coast Guard: We've seen people swing machetes at Coast Guard boarding officers, we've had people threaten to throw heavy objects at coast guard officers. We have had feces thrown at coast guard officers, and we've also have migrants attempt to injure themselves in the hopes that then they would get special treatment from the Coast Guard. MIKE JAMES: This is just one boat, but Coast Guard officials say the "Wung Fung Lung" is part of a vast network that brings thousands of Chinese immigrants to American shores every year. Some of them get through, but the Coast Guard is tightening its surveillance of smuggling routes in the Pacific. On this ship, officers arrested four suspected smugglers and sent the 249 Chinese onboard back home. But transporting illegal immigrants is high-profit business. Immigration experts say the gross is $10 billion a year. Smugglers and their desperate clients quickly find other ways into the United States. STEVE PERKINS, Longshoreman: When INS opened it up, there was three garbage cans-- I guess they'd be 20-gallon garbage cans-- sitting here, and I suppose some was for waste, some was for food. And then behind those cans, from about here back, blankets, quilts. MIKE JAMES: Seattle longshoreman Steve Perkins worked on the crew that uncovered this container in early January with 15 Chinese immigrants onboard. The smugglers use soft-top container boxes because they let air circulate to the immigrants inside, but the people caught in this 40-by-eight-foot space were virtually entombed in the ship hold, with ten other containers stacked on top of them. STEVE PERKINS: One of them had no shoes and socks. I went to get wool socks to give him, and they'd already got him hustled into the van to take him away. They were just petrified. They were... they didn't know if they were going to get shot, what was going to go on, what was going to happen to them. They just... You could see it in their face. MIKE JAMES: The same week at another soft-top container, immigration inspectors found three men dead and 15 others in poor health. Melvin Austin, administrator at the immigration detention center in Seattle, remembers the night the survivors came in. MELVIN AUSTIN, Immigration Detention Center: The ones that came out of that container were in bad shape. Seven of the 15 that survived had to be hospitalized to get them back to good health. The other eight did come in here, but they also were dehydrated. They needed to be... You know, they needed good nourishment, they needed plenty of fluids. MIKE JAMES: Container shipments are only the latest smugglers' strategy to find a way around U.S. Customs and Coast Guard inspections. In a pattern familiar to the immigration service, the immigrants, usually starting from Fujian Province in China, make their way by land to Hong Kong, where smugglers lock them inside containers. Under the names of bogus shipping companies, those containers go across the Pacific to ports on the American West Coast. From there, the immigrants eventually make their way to the underground sweatshop economy in the Eastern United States, mostly in lower Manhattan. And there, they pay off the high cost of the journey. It cost $8,000 to ship a soft-top container like this from Hong Kong to Seattle, but smugglers are charging the stowaways around $50,000 each for the trip. 15 people in a box like this, 15 stowaways-- that's $750,000. Kate Pflaumer, the U.S. Attorney for Western Washington, is prosecuting two Chinese nationals arrested near the Seattle waterfront not far from the container where the three immigrants died. The two suspects are charged with conspiracy to smuggle illegal immigrants into the United States for profit. Pflaumer believes the smugglers willfully mislead people desperate to get out of China. KATE PFLAUMER, U.S. Attorney: That's one of the most pathetic things about this, I think, because the smugglers apparently advertise this as the promised land where employment will be easy and living will be good. And in fact, they charge very high prices. People don't pay that money up front, they pay that money in indentured servitude when they get here. And in our experience, it's in sweat shops, it's in very grim laboring conditions. It's in prostitution. It's not anywhere near what the smugglers have promised. MIKE JAMES: The immigrants who survived the container voyage are in detention now at the Seattle immigration center, and in several local jails. Fearful of reprisals against families back home, most are refusing to say anything publicly about their journey, or about the men who brought them here, the smugglers they call snake heads. Seattle immigration attorney Dan Danilov understands why so many immigrants take this journey. His own parents took him on a refugee flight from Stalinist Russia a generation ago, leaving everything behind. Now some of the latest stowaways are his clients. DAN DANILOV, Immigration Lawyer: It's the economic opportunities in America, the new way of life, to improve yourself and your families and their children, because, you see, once somebody comes to America, and you can be recognized as a permanent resident, and after five years apply for American citizenship, that person becomes a magnet to bring in the rest of the family to the U.S.A. MIKE JAMES: And the fact is, for thousands of Chinese immigrants, there is a payoff. They do get through the American net. 44% of all asylum claims by Chinese immigrants are granted, and immigration officials say half those successful claims are based on the Chinese policy that limits families to just one child. Four years ago, the U.S. Congress passed a law making the one-child policy grounds for asylum. DAN DANILOV: When Congress passed that law, they proclaimed that this is a distinct benefit available to the people of China. Many of the individuals that I represent at our office, and other immigration lawyers, have succeed to get asylum for them MIKE JAMES: After the rash container incidents-- at least 14 different cases in the pt half-year-- U.S. Customs began more aggressive patrols at West Coast ports of entry. Rag-top containers, the only ones suitable for smuggling human cargo, a routinely n checked now. Dogs sniff around the containers. Inspectors look for false walls inside. KATE PFLAUMER: The main difficulty is getting high enough up the chain. The people who are in control of this are doubtless either in Fujian Province in Hong Kong, or in New York, where a lot of them are headed for. So if wean get inside those smuggling rings, then we can make headway. MIKE JAMES: And even with U.S. Customs now aggressively focused on soft-top container traffic, no one expects the smugglers to give up this high-profit business. LARRY ADKINS, U.S. Customs, Seattle: Once they realize that we do have a handle on it, they're going to change their M.O. They're going to start taking these people to San Francisco or to some other port of entry, or they're going to start using a different type of smuggling conveyance. MIKE JAMES: In fact, the smugglers could convert refrigerator containers to make them pump in fresh air. That would complicate enforcement, because while very few soft-top containers cross the Pacific, shippers use thousands of refrigerator units every year. On the Seattle waterfront, the desperation evident in the container smuggling still lingers in conversation. Steve Perkins says no one who moves containers out on the docks can push one question out of their minds. STEVE PERKINS: Are you moving people? Are they alive? Are you banging them around, hurting them? Everybody on the waterfront thinks that now. It's a pretty sad thing to realize how the people have to escape their own country this way. And now everybody thinks about it. GWEN IFILL: Since that report was prepare two of the three men charged in the fatal Seattle smuggling case have pled guilty. In Los Angeles last week, 15 illegal Chinese immigrants were discovered in a hard-topped container rigged with a ventilating system. A total of 126 Chinese stowaways have been apprehended from cargo containers this year. |
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