Migrant Smuggling Ship Seized : Immigration: Vessel carrying 200 Chinese is intercepted in territorial waters off San Diego.

A rusty and leaking fishing trawler crammed with 200 illegal immigrants from China was forced Wednesday into San Diego Harbor by a U.S. Coast Guard cutter, the second such boat to hit the West Coast in recent weeks.

Officials said the immigrants had paid between $8,000 and $20,000 to make the perilous voyage from the Chinese coast.

Coast Guard crewmen from the cutter Boutwell boarded the fishing ship Chin Lung Hsiang (Golden Dragon) when it ventured into the three-mile territorial waters off San Diego’s Point Loma about 11 a.m.

The Mexican navy had boarded the ship Sunday night about 60 miles southwest of Ensenada, given the crew about 1,000 gallons of water and told them to head northward. The Boutwell had trailed the vessel for two days before it crossed into U.S. waters.

Expecting to come to this country for a better life, the immigrants instead were greeted by a phalanx of reporters and photographers and dozens of authorities from law enforcement agencies.

The illegal immigrants were immediately taken by bus to the U.S. Immigration & Naturalization Service holding facility in El Centro to be processed for deportation. Seven suspected smugglers, as well as nine crewmen from Taiwan, were taken to the Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown San Diego to await arraignment on federal smuggling charges.

Coast Guard Lt. (j.g.) Scott Brewen, who headed the boarding party, said the crew was not armed and offered no resistance. He said most of the immigrants had been kept below decks in converted freezers.

“They looked well-fed and decently treated,” Brewen said. “The sanitation was decent and there was still food. We had no indication they had been mistreated.”

Brewen said that although the Chin Lung Hsiang was not in immediate danger of sinking, it was leaking oil, had water below deck and probably could not have made a return voyage. The 200-foot ship carried a Honduran registry.

Brewen said each immigrant appeared to have a suitcase. As they filed onto the INS buses, the immigrants, most of whom looked in their 20s, were subdued; some hid their faces from the cameras.

Rudy Murillo, INS spokesman in San Diego, said the service has information that in many cases involving Chinese refugees, smugglers’ fees are paid by prospective employers or family members in the United States.

Although this is the first such seizure of a ship involved in illegal immigration of Chinese nationals off San Diego, there have been other seizures off Florida, Northern California and Hawaii.

In late April, Mexican authorities in Ensenada apprehended 306 Chinese refugees just as they were preparing to travel northward and cross into the United States. The 306 are now housed in Mexicali.

The seizure of the Chin Lung Hsiang brings to nearly 1,000 the number of Chinese apprehended on the high seas this year by the Coast Guard. This is up from 613 in 1992 and a mere 20 in 1991.

The largest seizure this year occurred 1,500 miles off Hawaii when the Coast Guard came across a boat with 527 Chinese bound for the United States.

Murillo said there are indications that Asian organized crime is involved in the smuggling ventures. The Chinese apprehended in other seizures have been reluctant to give any details, leading authorities to believe that the smugglers enforce the silence through threats of violence, possibly against family members remaining in China.

Murillo said the Mexican government is cooperating fully with U.S. authorities because it does not want Mexico to become “a pipeline” for illegal immigration from China.

Of the seven suspected smugglers, one was a woman. Eighteen of the 200 undocumented immigrants were women.