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Illegal Migrants Get Rougher, U.S. Says

On his first night aboard this floating nightmare, the commander of the Coast Guard boarding party, Lieutenant Junior Grade Robert Borowczak, lay awake worrying that his crew might not have captured all of the smugglers, known as ''snakeheads,'' and wondering what mayhem might come next.

The rust bucket and its desperate human cargo were intercepted Dec. 9 about 300 miles (500 kilometers) off the coast of Guatemala, the most recent in a series of incidents that have caused the Coast Guard to declare that intercepting illegal migrants has become more dangerous than running down drug smugglers.

''As smuggling in human cargo becomes more lucrative, the propensity for violence has risen, and in addition to the smugglers using force, the migrants have become more willing to jeopardize life and limb,'' said Commander Jim McPherson, a Coast Guard spokesman.

For six days and nights, the crew of the Coast Guard cutter Munro provided food, water and medical attention to the migrants who had spent two months jammed on the Wing Fung Lung in a doomed effort to enter the United States.

But keeping order proved the greatest challenge.

The boarding party had to resort numerous times to batons, pepper spray and handcuffs, according to Lieutenant Borowczak and other crew members who, after their return to their home base at Alameda, California, provided the first full accounts of the incident in telephone interviews this week.

Since a surge in the number of Chinese smuggling vessels crossing the Pacific began last spring, the Immigration and Naturalization Service has repatriated 872 migrants to China.

Dozens more migrants have been caught in American ports, and unknown hundreds have made it to the United States, where many end up working in sweatshops or kitchens to pay off debts of $30,000 or more for the illicit passage.

Along the way, the Coast Guard has recorded 18 incidents of violence - compared with only one in the whole of 1997 - during missions to stop illegal immigration.

Chinese snakeheads, often associated with criminal triad gangs, are not the only culprits. Cuban migrants intent on making it to Florida have repeatedly threatened Coast Guard personnel with machetes in recent months.

''Over the years, I have handled thousands of migrants - Haitians, Cubans, Chinese and others,'' said Captain Wayne Justice, a 22-year veteran of the Coast Guard, ''and in the past, they were always compliant and pretty much resigned to their fates. But now you see people who are absolutely determined to reach their destination, and they'll fight back when they realize you are going to stop them.''

Captain Justice was in command of the Munro, on a drug patrol in the eastern Pacific, when a Coast Guard plane spotted a suspicious freighter. The Munro came alongside the vessel that night and sent a boat to investigate.

The freighter's crew said they were carrying rice, then plywood.

They said only six people were on board, but at least that many could be seen looking out portholes. The master of the Wing Fung Lung refused a request to inspect the ship.

The Munro fell back to follow at a distance as the Coast Guard checked the ship's registry.

After a day, Captain Justice learned that the freighter was not a Taiwan vessel as its crew had claimed.

At that point, it was legally a ''stateless vessel'' and the Coast Guard had authority to board it under international law.

Eventually 249 Chinese nationals were sent home, and four suspected smugglers were brought to the United States this month to face a variety of criminal charges.