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Published Friday, January 14, 2000, in the San Jose Mercury News

Gangs exploit human cargo

BY BRANDON BAILEY
Mercury News Staff Writer

The sick and desperate Chinese immigrants who were found inside a cargo container in Seattle this week were only the latest victims of organized-crime groups that make easy profit by exploiting the vulnerable.

Two men were indicted Thursday on federal conspiracy and immigrant-smuggling charges. But the discovery Monday of the human cargo from the southern coast of China -- 15 men who spent 20 days locked in a metal shipping container with only a little food, scarce light and no toilet -- has been repeated more than a dozen times during the past year. Officials have found nearly 200 illegal immigrants in cargo containers at West Coast ports from Long Beach to Vancouver, Canada, including the bodies of three men also discovered Monday in Seattle.

Evidence appears to link several of the cases to the men indicted Thursday. And authorities believe that many of the smuggled Chinese were destined for New York City. There, powerful Asian criminal syndicates act as labor brokers for sweatshops, brothels, restaurants and other businesses that thrive on the cheap labor of illegal immigrants who are working off exorbitant fees charged by the smugglers, known as ``snake heads.''

To authorities in the Bay Area, it's a familiar crime.

Three years ago, police raids in San Jose exposed a criminal pipeline that allowed Asia-based gangs to bring young women from Thailand to work -- sometimes unwillingly -- as prostitutes in the United States and Canada.

In 1996, when a gang of mostly Vietnamese crooks was indicted in a series of multimillion-dollar computer-chip robberies in Silicon Valley and elsewhere, authorities also said their ringleaders had been paid $650,000 by a New York syndicate to smuggle 280 Chinese immigrants ashore from a freighter off the San Mateo County coast.

``Asian organized crime historically relies on alien smuggling,'' federal prosecutor Stephen Gruel told reporters after a jury convicted Johnny That Luong, the gang's alleged leader, and five others who helped bring the immigrants into the United States at Moss Landing and Half Moon Bay.

`A lucrative business'

``It is a lucrative business with high profits and low costs,'' Gruel said.

Luong is still facing trial on charges that he masterminded a series of violent ``takeover'' robberies at computer-chip manufacturing and assembly firms on the West Coast. During his smuggling trial, authorities presented evidence that his group -- which members called ``the Company'' -- was hired as a subcontractor by three Asian gangs based in New York City, known as the White Tigers, Fuk Ching and the Broom Street Boys.

New York is the traditional destination point for an immigrant-smuggling route that begins in China's Fujian province, although experts say some Fujianese are winding up in cities like Los Angeles and Atlanta.

While the Bay Area has a large Chinese-American community, experts and activists say most of the local community is long established and traces its ancestry to other regions of China. Recent immigrants are likely to be more affluent and have legal status. If they are here illegally, they are more likely to have entered on temporary visas without the aid of smugglers, said Frank Tse of the non-profit Asian Law Alliance.

In contrast, New York has the largest U.S. community of people from Fujian, and it's easier for new immigrants to be quickly absorbed into the underground economy there, said Peter Kwong, a professor of Asian studies at New York's Hunter College, who has studied illegal immigration.

Fujian has been a key point of origin, experts said, because it has an ample supply of rural and impoverished residents who are potential candidates for emigration. And the province's criminal element has long experience dealing with gangsters in nearby Taiwan and other countries.

Experts say the smuggling trade is often built on economic relationships between various criminal groups, and is not necessarily controlled by a single, monolithic organization.

In one common scenario, according to Ken Elwood, a top-level enforcement official with the Immigration and Naturalization Service, someone running an illicit business in New York would tell a contact in the local crime syndicate that he needs workers.

``The organized-crime member in New York acts as a sort of employment broker,'' he said. ``The order is put out in China, where criminal groups have contacts all through the rural and agrarian areas.''

Indentured servants

Rural Chinese who volunteer to emigrate think they're getting a chance at a better life, Kwong said. But most speak no English and have few skills, so they are forced to work as indentured servants to pay off their debts -- as much as $60,000 -- to the smugglers. Sometimes it's in a garment factory or unlicensed construction firm; other times the work involves prostitution or drugs.

With China's huge population and an economy going through a major transformation, experts say China has been a source of workers who emigrate illegally to countries all around the world. But Elwood said the United States, with its established Chinese communities, is an especially attractive destination because its own economy is so strong.

Thousands from Fujian

He estimated that U.S. authorities are intercepting 2,000 to 3,000 illegal immigrants from Fujian a year, while acknowledging there's no way of knowing how many people have made it into the country undetected.

The cargo containers are a relatively new tactic. But in recent years, Chinese stowaways have been caught trying to enter the United States on ships headed for Canada, Mexico and Savannah, Ga.

While conditions in the containers are dangerous and inhumane, they may be more profitable for the syndicates, Elwood said.

Smugglers used to get $30,000 a head for bringing immigrants in on aging, rusted freighters, he explained. ``The container vessels are described (to the immigrants) as a safer way to go, although it's absolutely not a safe way. . . . So they get $50,000 a person. That's money in the bank for these organized-crime groups.''

Several immigrants discovered in a shipping container in Long Beach last year told authorities they were trying to get to New York. And one of the alleged smugglers arrested in Seattle last week carried an New York state driver's license.

Yu Zheng and Sheng Ding, along with a third man who wasn't indicted, were caught Jan. 2 when federal agents found them in a van near a Seattle shipping terminal. Acting on a tip from Hong Kong, authorities had just discovered 12 stowaways inside a cargo container newly arrived from China.

After searching the three men and their hotel room, agents found shipping documents for that container and for two more cargo containers that were scheduled to arrive two days later.

All three containers had been shipped by a Hong Kong exporter that also shipped two containers that arrived in Long Beach last month, with at least 30 illegal immigrants inside.

Two more containers were discovered in Seattle this week, including the one with the three Chinese who died. But the indictment issued Thursday charges Zheng and Ding only with smuggling the container discovered Jan. 2; prosecutors declined comment on the other incidents.

The immigrants detained in Long Beach and Seattle have been given medical treatment and face deportation proceedings. Officials say many have already expressed interest in requesting political asylum in the United States. Such requests aren't granted routinely. Experts, however, say many immigrants are eligible for release on bond while their asylum request is pending.

``Many of them disappear, at that point,'' Elwood acknowledged.

U.S. authorities say they are working closely with Canadian and Hong Kong officials to investigate the recent incidents. Elwood said he's confident they will make more arrests and win convictions against the smugglers. But he acknowledged it probably won't mean the end of the smuggling business.

``As we are successful in our enforcement efforts, they respond with different tactics,'' he said. ``They are great entrepreneurs.''