Survivors of a Sordid Venture Seek a Place

In this city’s long history of immigration, few moments have been stranger than the morning the Chinese swam ashore in Breezy Point.

Hundreds of refugees staggered out of the surf, some blue with cold, some wearing only underwear. Those who were strong enough fled over the dunes, scattering into the middle-class Irish American neighborhood in Queens.

In the dark, Eddie Valentine, a volunteer firefighter, could make out the rusty hull of a tramp steamer, the Golden Venture. The water churned with bodies, he recalled, and survivors stank after two months in a cargo hold. By the time it was over, Valentine was convinced that the Chinese deserved to stay. “Those poor people,” he said. “They made it to shore.”

The Golden Venture ran aground near Coney Island on June 6, 1993. Investigators later uncovered a complex criminal network in which immigrants agreed to pay upward of $30,000 to “snakeheads,” or human smugglers.

While local newspapers have followed the prosecution of the accused smugglers, less attention has been paid to the 286 passengers, most of whom are living a tenuous life in America, still hoping to gain legal status.

On Wednesday, 31 of the passengers were in New York for the premiere of “Golden Venture,” a documentary that traces the lives of four men captured on the beach at Breezy Point. Arming He, a soft-spoken man who owns a restaurant in a Florida strip mall, took the opportunity to make an appeal for citizenship.

“Please, President Bush,” the immigrant said at a news conference. “What else can be asked of us? We have paid dearly for our entrance.”

The Golden Venture’s arrival in America came at a period of anxiety over immigration: The first World Trade Center bombing had taken place three months earlier, and Immigration and Naturalization Service officials said they would keep the passengers in detention as an example to others. Many of the illegal immigrants spent the next four years in prison. In the end, 110 were deported, although 60 of those have since returned, said Peter Cohn, director of the film.

About 220 of the passengers still live in America, most working long hours in the restaurant business. Although President Clinton ordered the last of the group to be released from prison in 1997, they still are subject to deportation.

Craig Trebilcock, a personal injury lawyer from York, Pa., who became an ardent advocate for the immigrants while they were in prison, called them “the bravest men I’ve ever seen in my life.”

“We have come to a point in the nation’s history where just saying the word ‘immigration’ is provocative, and that’s a shame,” said Trebilcock, now the group’s lead immigration attorney. “We attract the cream of the world to this country.”

The Golden Venture episode shocked many New Yorkers, but perhaps none more than the residents of Breezy Point, a gated community of 2,800 houses on a spit of land at the outlet of Hudson Bay. Breezy Point is home to firefighters, police officers and stockbrokers. It is predominantly Republican -- and, according to census data, the whitest community in New York.

People in Breezy Point, not far removed from their own immigrant history, sympathized with the Golden Venture passengers, said Msgr. Michael Curran, pastor at St. Thomas More Church.

“A community like this, it’s very Irish, so not everyone’s ancestors here were quite legal,” Curran said. “There was still an understanding of people coming for their shot.”

Some of the Golden Venture passengers had been traveling for more than a year -- over land from Fujian province to Bangkok, Thailand, and by sea to Mombasa, Kenya. After a two-month passage around the Horn of Africa, the captain of the Golden Venture had intended to rendezvous with smaller boats that would take the passengers to shore, according to Cohn’s film. When the smaller boats did not arrive, he rammed the Golden Venture into a sand bar about 300 feet from land. Ten people drowned trying to swim ashore.

Many of the immigrants collapsed on the beach, but others scrambled across the sand and through the town. Ted Eberle was making coffee at 5 in the morning when he saw three Chinese men knocking on his glass door. One was only wearing underwear, so he handed the man a beach towel. They offered him $100 to use his phone, but Eberle said no.

“I thought, ‘Boy, this is really weird,’ ” said Eberle, 43. “Three Chinese guys at five in the morning. It’s out of the ordinary.”

Mary Henley, 65, lived next door to a building under construction. Her husband found three men cowering there in the unfinished basement, and coaxed them up onto a porch. Fear, Henley said, “was written all over their faces.” That was the last she saw of them.

Authorities spent two days trying to round up the immigrants, using tracking dogs; six of the passengers evaded capture.

“It was all over in a few hours,” said Msgr. Michael Connelly, 71, a former pastor at St. Thomas More. “Except a few weeks later, a body came to shore. It showed what man will do to be free.” At Wednesday’s news conference, several of the Golden Venture passengers spoke.

Sean Chen, 31, a Philadelphia bartender, recalled “half-walking, half-crawling onto the beach,” then losing consciousness and waking up in a hospital, one hand cuffed to the bed.

Cao Wu, 31, said he felt certain that he was going to die. He jumped into the water when the other passengers jumped. He held onto a plastic bag containing his clothes, which allowed him to float a little. The ones who were not clinging to their bags drowned, he said.

Like the other passengers, Wu spoke about his life as a single-minded quest for American citizenship. Asked what he does in his free time, Wu said: “Freedom is what makes me happy. The thought of freedom.”