132 Illegal Immigrants Found on Ship

U.S. agents using welding torches and crowbars discovered 132 Chinese illegal immigrants in a secret compartment in the hold of a ship docked in Savannah, Ga., immigration officials said Friday.

U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service spokeswoman Sue Brown said the migrants were found by agents acting on a tip that Prince Nicholas, a ship registered in Cyprus, was smuggling illegal immigrants.

Agents boarded the ship nine miles from Savannah on Wednesday but found no sign of the migrants, Brown said. She said the agents returned a second time and still found no one.

But when the ship docked at Savannah on Thursday, INS agents armed with welding torches and crowbars were waiting. They found the people in a secret compartment of the hold that had been covered with a sheet of steel and a door that was welded in place.

All of the migrants were from China, all were male, and 51 claimed to be juveniles, Brown said.

Georgia’s booming economy and low unemployment rate may have led to promises to the men of jobs, particularly in agriculture, Brown said.

On Friday, the migrants were taken to Atlanta, where Brown said they would be interviewed by agents who detained the ship’s 28 crew members.

According to authorities, smugglers charge the refugees as much as $50,000 to make the journey.

Brown said the ship left China weeks ago and docked in Sweden, Finland and Denmark before going to Savannah.

She said the Chinese, most of whom appeared to be 18 to 25 years old, were in good health, despite having only a faucet from which to get drinking water and a hole in the floor that served as a toilet.

The inside of the hold was fitted with a honeycomb of wooden berths stacked like crates.

“To my knowledge, it was not a pretty picture down there,” Brown said. “Still, they were in very good condition. That’s why the smuggling was very suspicious. They did not look like they were underfed.”

On Wednesday, about 150 illegal immigrants from China waded to a remote Canadian beach through stormy seas after being unloaded from a fishing boat that carried them across the Pacific Ocean.