Last Chinese Emigrants Fly Home : Smuggling: Flight is fourth arranged by Mexico to deport migrants from three ships. U.S. Coast Guard investigates vessel off Hawaii.

Mexican officials Monday hustled a fourth and final group of Chinese migrants aboard a plane and returned them to China, ending a mass deportation that began with the U.S. Coast Guard’s seizure of three ships off the Baja California coast.

The 77 Chinese placed aboard a jetliner at Tijuana’s international airport brought to 667 the number of emigrants returned by Mexico to China since Saturday, Mexican officials said. Thirty-one Chinese ship crew members have been detained to face charges of immigrant smuggling, a spokesman for Mexico’s Interior Ministry said.

Meanwhile, a Coast Guard spokesman said the agency is investigating “a possible alien vessel” believed crammed with Chinese off the coast of Hawaii, but would give no details on that ship or any other smuggling vessels that reportedly are bound for the Pacific Coast.

Coast Guard spokesman Nicholas Sandifer in Washington released a statement and said no details of the search for vessels would be given. “Coast Guard forces are continuing to be vigilant in the Pacific Ocean,” the statement said. “We are gathering information on this matter.

“We did think we had several vessels heading for Hawaii,” Sandifer said. “We were looking for that (Hawaii area traffic) to pick up.”

The search for vessels would likely include long-range C-130 aircraft as well as vessels that usually patrol the Pacific. Additional Coast Guard boats have been enlisted to aid in the hunt, he said.

The mass deportation capped a complex agreement between the United States and Mexico in which Mexico agreed to detain and return the emigrants so that the Chinese could not take advantage of U.S. political asylum laws. Mexico initially balked but agreed to process the Chinese on humanitarian grounds, Mexican officials said.

The first planeload of 145 migrants repatriated from Mexico arrived in China’s Fujian Province on Monday, and a second plane was expected later in the day, officials said.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said the government “will handle these illegal emigrants upon their repatriation according to law, and if they are really being deceived by smugglers then they will not be put into prison.”

Wen Wei Po, a Beijing-controlled newspaper in Hong Kong, on Monday quoted Zhang Zhenlang, a Fujian Province official, as saying the returnees will be lectured but “will not receive any sort of punishment.”

Zhang indicated that the rigors of the long journey, and the disappointment at being sent back, should be enough to deter the emigrants from trying again: “After their suffering this time, they are not going to emigrate illegally again.”

There is evidence, however, that those caught trying to leave illegally sometimes face heavy fines.

Li Huan, vice director of the Public Security Ministry’s Department of Frontier Defense, recently told the Associated Press that people caught trying to illegally leave China may be fined up to 5,000 yuan (about $909). In 1992, average per-capita income of Fujian Province peasants was 984 yuan (about $178), according to official statistics.

The U.S. government is clamping down on political asylum seekers who, regardless of the merits of their claims, can stay in the United States for years while their cases are being settled.

But few expect the seizures to be the last. Mexican officials said over the weekend that 11 boats believed laden with Chinese passengers were sighted steaming toward the Pacific Coast from China, or off of Panama. The Coast Guard did not confirm any numbers or location of ships on Monday.

Attempts to smuggle Chinese into the United States have skyrocketed in the last year, jumping from 20 people caught in 1991 to about 2,000 apprehended since December.

While the most recent wave of vessels have attempted landings in Mexico, Northern California has been the scene of three foiled smuggling ventures since December.

Three days before Christmas, a freighter dubbed the “misery ship” was rescued outside San Francisco Bay, and 180 Chinese emigres packed into its filthy hold were arrested.

In a bold action five months later, a ship deposited its Chinese passengers at a historic Army fort near Golden Gate Bridge before being seized by the Coast Guard after an eight-hour chase across the sea. About 170 Chinese were arrested, but another 80 managed to flee into San Francisco neighborhoods.

The most recent incident in Northern California occurred June 2, when nearly 300 emigrants were apprehended after two ships landed in daylight at separate ports--Moss Landing and Princeton, both south of San Francisco.