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![]() ![]() 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'
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
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
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.''
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