Chinese Immigrants Recount Harrowing Quest for New Life : Rescue: They say smugglers abused them during 43-day journey that ended when boat sank off coast of California.

About 150 Chinese nationals paid as much as $30,000 apiece to endure a horror-filled, 43-day boat trip to what they thought would be new homes in America, according to federal officials in Los Angeles who are investigating the alleged illegal-immigration scheme.

Traveling under the care of “enforcers” who strictly rationed food and water, the immigrants were sometimes beaten, kicked and threatened before their 70-foot fishing vessel sank Sept. 11 more than 200 miles west of Point Conception, Jim Hayes of the federal Immigration and Naturalization Service said Saturday.

At least one man is believed to have died in an accident at sea only days before the boat sank, Hayes added.

The immigrants, destined for Northern California, arrived in Los Angeles last week after a dramatic high-seas rescue involving a Panamanian freighter, two U.S. Navy ships and a U.S. Coast Guard transport plane. After boarding the freighter, the Chinese were taken to Los Angeles Harbor, where they are being detained while officials continue to investigate the case.

About 140 of the passengers were men, seven were women and the others were boys.

Twelve people--all crew members or alleged enforcers on the sunken vessel--were arrested and charged in Los Angeles last week with attempting to smuggle the immigrants into the United States, Hayes said.

One suspect, Wang Herng Sing, who was arrested Friday, is regarded as a key figure in the smuggling operation, Hayes said. Nine were considered enforcers, who maintained discipline, rationed rice and water, and herded the passengers below deck whenever there was a danger of them being seen, Hayes said.

Each of the 12 suspects could face five years in prison or fines of $250,000.

“We’re actively pursuing other leads in this case,” said Hayes, the assistant director of anti-smuggling operations at the INS district office in Los Angeles. “We believe (the suspects) have other associates here in the United States who did not go to sea.”

Hayes said the travelers--who are part of a growing tide of immigrants fleeing China for the United States by boat--are providing officials with details of their ordeal. Some arrived in Los Angeles dehydrated. In several cases, passengers stole food from crew members.

“The ones that were caught were beaten, at times,” Hayes said.

Investigators learned that the trip began July 31 aboard a Taiwanese fishing trawler, which transferred the migrants to the 70-foot American fishing vessel, the New Star, about 300 miles from California. During that transfer, a line used to temporarily lash the two ships together snapped, causing a heavy piece of metal to strike one passenger in the head, Hayes said.

According to the accounts of those aboard, the injured man later died and his body was dumped overboard, Hayes said.

The ill-fated fishing vessel was believed to be the eighth such boat loaded with Chinese nationals to be intercepted in American waters in the past year. Two earlier ships--with 132 and 85 passengers aboard--were intercepted in Los Angeles, Hayes said.

Duke Austin, an INS spokesman in Washington, D.C., called the spate of Chinese ships a new phenomenon and speculated that they might be connected to a large illegal immigration ring. At the very least, he said, “there’s a trend, and certainly one we are very concerned about.”