INS Breaks Smuggling Operation : Immigration: Agents in undercover activity find 118 Chinese in Garden Grove home. In all, 139 are taken into custody at four locations.

A well-organized, heavily financed smuggling ring that transported Chinese immigrants to Southern California by ship was dismantled after federal authorities raided a Garden Grove residence and found 118 immigrants inside, immigration officials said Wednesday.

The immigrants had arrived on a 200-foot fishing trawler 320 miles off the California coast and were brought into San Pedro on board an excursion vessel that was playing a role in the five-week undercover operation mounted by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.

The immigrants were believed to be bound for jobs in New York, where they would serve as indentured servants to pay off the smugglers before attaining their freedom, officials said.

In all, 139 people were taken into custody Tuesday night in four separate locations, including 13 people described as smuggling suspects. In addition to the Garden Grove raid, INS agents simultaneously arrested 12 people at Los Angeles International Airport, eight people as they were deplaning at New York’s Kennedy Airport, and one at a motel near the rented Garden Grove home.

The immigrants--some of whom had already paid smugglers as much as $10,000 to be brought to the United States--were being held in INS detention facilities and face deportation proceedings that could return them to the People’s Republic of China, officials said.

Robert M. Moschorak, district director of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, called the operation “one of the most significant over-the-ocean smuggling operations we have ever seen.” Most immigrants who illegally enter the United States come across the U.S.-Mexico border.

“This case clearly shows that illegal alien trafficking is not limited to Latin America, but is an extremely serious worldwide problem, particularly involving Chinese,” INS Commissioner Gene McNary said.

Undercover INS operatives collected $48,000 from smugglers to pay for the services of the passenger boat, fuel and food for the immigrants. That sum indicates the size and sophistication of the smuggling ring, officials said. Possible ties to organized crime were being investigated, Moschorak said.

“We believe this is not the first time this has happened. They seem to know what they were doing,” Moschorak said in a Los Angeles press conference. “They were very well organized. They had the transportation down pat.”

It is not yet clear, he added, whether those arrested include the “upper echelon” of the smuggling ring, which is believed to be based in New York. The continuing investigation could lead to more arrests, officials said.

The immigrants were described as laborers from the Fukien province of China. Some told INS investigators the smugglers charged $30,000 to take them to the United States, with work required until the debt was paid. Jim Hayes, INS assistant district director of anti-smuggling operations, said it is not unusual for such immigrants to function as indentured servants.

When INS agents, backed up by the Garden Grove police, raided the three-bedroom, two-bath home in the 9700 block of Crosby Drive at 9:30 p.m. Tuesday, they found rooms barren of furniture and crowded with people who apparently were being sustained on a diet of rice, officials said. A sign on a wall explained in Mandarin the house rules--one of which forbade them from going outside.

The rules--and “enforcers” who intimidated the immigrants with verbal threats--were apparently effective, officials said. Residents of the middle-class, ethnically mixed neighborhood that borders an Asian commercial district on Garden Grove Boulevard said they were astounded that so many people had entered the house without causing a stir.

Teresa Zand, who lives across the street, said her husband witnessed the raid. “My husband couldn’t believe there were that many people in the house,” she said.

A next-door neighbor said Wednesday that he noticed the hubbub at the home Tuesday night but he assumed it to be a party.

The 13 smuggling suspects--12 adults and one juvenile--were described by authorities as Chinese nationals, except for one naturalized Chinese-American and one Korean national. If convicted, they face a maximum sentence of five years and a $250,000 fine for each immigrants that was smuggled in.

Officials said it is unclear where the immigrants--five of whom were women--boarded the fishing trawler.

The Coast Guard provided surveillance and could have seized the vessel in international waters on the grounds that it was engaged in operations violating U.S. law, Moschorak said. INS officials decided against seizing the ship because they feared that ringleaders would be alerted and evade arrest.

Now, he added, “if it’s any way possible, we’re going to seize that ship.”