Chinese Detainees Hounded by Government and Gangs : Smuggling: Human cargo in Golden Venture grounding in New York harbor face specter of Asian underworld. At the same time they fear deportation once all their appeals are exhausted.

One day a few months ago, a black limo with New York plates and tinted windows arrived at the York County Prison.

Three Asian men emerged. They had come for Lin Wu--one of the detainees from the Golden Venture, the Chinese freighter that ran aground off New York City last year and spilled its human cargo into the harbor.

Lin Wu, just released on bail, engaged in a heated discussion in Chinese with the men. Then he hung his head and left with them; his whereabouts today are anybody’s guess.

Prison Chaplain Bob Brenneman doesn’t know the identities of the men who came for Lin Wu, but he has his suspicions. He believes they were emissaries from the underworld that smuggled the detainees across the world.

Lin Wu and the others had each promised to pay $30,000 for freedom. Now, said Brenneman, the gangsters are turning up and demanding their money.

“I think they’re out there watching,” Brenneman said. “I don’t know how active it is, but I know it’s there. And I see the fear. And it’s real.”

The specter of gangs weighs on the Golden Venture detainees almost as heavily as the possibility the United States will deport them when all their appeals are exhausted.

“If I can leave here, I’ll just run away,” a 19-year-old man from China’s Fujian province said. A onetime pro-democracy activist who fears gang reprisals if he uses his real name, he calls himself “Sean.”

“I won’t go to New York, won’t go to any Chinese place,” he said. “I’ll just find a job in some small town. It doesn’t matter what the job is. If we stay away from Chinatowns, we’ll be OK.”

Ten of the 288 passengers on the Golden Venture died in the Atlantic Ocean off Rockaway Beach when the ship ran aground June 5, 1993.

The rest were sent to jails in Pennsylvania, Virginia, New York, Louisiana and California for adjudication. The ones who made it to land before they were detained are entitled to deportation hearings, and to bail.

Nobody knows just how many have been released, and the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service won’t say. But freedom remains illusory when the gangs are waiting at the jailhouse door.

“When you’re talking about $30,000 to $35,000 a head, sooner or later somebody’s going to come knocking,” said Luke Rettler, chief of the New York County District Attorney’s Asian Gang Office.

The INS won’t discuss the matter. But police and sources who speak on condition of anonymity say they believe gangs are taking steps to make sure their investments don’t skip town untracked.

There are stories, they say, some rumors and others verified: Telephone calls that come to the prison from former detainees requesting sensitive information about inmates; strange calls to the advocates’ houses; rumors of attorneys being paid by the gangs.

Little is done openly.

“The problem with dealing with this perceived threat is that no one comes in and hands you a card that says ‘Snakeheads, Inc.,’ ” said Craig Trebilcock, a York attorney who represents one detainee, Pin Lin, and has led the volunteer legal effort on behalf of the detainees.

“It’s not like the streets of York are being driven up and down by Chinese gangs,” he said.