PORT HUENEME : 7 Stowaways Caught Trying to Enter U.S.

In the first arrest this year of illegal aliens trying to enter the United States through Port Hueneme, Border Patrol agents on Monday detained seven Ecuadoreans who had stowed away on a banana boat.

The seven men had hidden in the hold of the MV Kahlij Cooler, a 461-foot vessel registered in Panama. The ship left Bolivar, Ecuador, on May 5, anchored off Port Hueneme on Saturday night and docked Monday morning, said Jim Pelosi, a Border Patrol spokesman.

Five days into the voyage, one of the stowaways became sick and the men started pounding on the hatch doors, Pelosi said. Nobody heard them, however, until one of the stowaways found an alarm switch in the darkened hold.

Pelosi said the men had a supply of water, candy bars and other food. “They probably would have remained undetected until they got into port,” he said. He added, however, that the stowaways almost certainly would have been discovered then.

“As soon as you open the hold, you can tell people were in there,” he said.

The sick man was not seriously ill and was treated on the ship, Pelosi said. All seven men were to be kept aboard the Kahlij Cooler Monday night and were to go back to Ecuador when the ship began its return trip today.