Human Smugglers Taking to the Air

Spurred by the potential for huge profits, traffickers are increasingly routing illegal Chinese immigrants through major U.S. airports, including Los Angeles International, according to U.S. immigration officials.

The influx has strained airport employees, from immigration personnel working overtime to process the Chinese, to maintenance staff repairing plumbing clogged with documents that would-be immigrants try to flush down toilets.

In the past year, an average of 170 suspected illegal Chinese immigrants have been detained each month at LAX with fake or missing travel documents, officials said.

Rosemary Melville, deputy district director of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, or INS, in Los Angeles, said the agency was “marginally successful” at catching smugglers and their human cargo.

“But when you look at the numbers, you know we’re not making a dent in getting at the source,” she said in a telephone interview.

In recent years, air travel between China and the U.S. has increased, reflecting expanding economic ties between the two countries. New airplanes and flight paths have allowed more nonstop flights, such as between Beijing and Detroit or Shanghai and Los Angeles.

Meanwhile, more aggressive policing of America’s land and sea borders has prompted smugglers to switch to air routes.

“What we know about smuggling is that the smuggling adjusts and shifts very quickly,” INS Commissioner Doris Meissner said at a news conference in Beijing on Monday.

Meissner, visiting China for the first time, is meeting with Chinese officials to share information and secure cooperation in combating human smuggling. Her delegation includes INS officials from Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and other common entry points for illegal immigrants.

So far this year, the United States has repatriated about 2,700 Chinese who have come by air, and that number is expected to reach 4,000 by year’s end, Meissner said. By comparison, 1,000 Chinese arriving by boat have been repatriated so far this year. No figures are available for the total number of suspected illegal Chinese immigrants arriving in the U.S.

Human smugglers, known in China as “snakeheads,” now charge as much as $60,000 per person to get their customers into the U.S.

The INS delegation also will tour southeastern China’s Fujian province, whose people continue a centuries-old tradition of migration that has helped populate Chinatowns around the world.

Fujianese account for 80% of the 10,000 illegal emigrants intercepted by Chinese authorities last year, according to official Chinese figures. The plight of Fujianese in failed smuggling attempts has captured worldwide attention, from the drowning of 10 passengers from the Golden Venture off New York in 1993, to last month’s discovery of 58 dead Chinese in a truckload of tomatoes in Dover, England.

According to Jack Lin, the immigration agency’s Beijing-based attache, would-be illegal immigrants commonly enter Chinese airports with a ticket for a non-U.S. destination, then swap boarding passes with a legitimate traveler bound for the United States. Others carry forged passports and visas, or real ones with altered photos.

Lin said an average of one illegal passenger is caught on each of Northwest Airlines’ direct flights from Beijing to Detroit. Others are caught transiting through Tokyo, London, or Bangkok, Thailand.

More disturbing to Chinese and U.S. officials are corrupt airport personnel. Diplomats say border police, airline staff and ground crew at Chinese airports have been bribed to allow illegal immigrants to get past checkpoints or to go directly to the tarmac and onto the plane.

When the illegal immigrants get to Los Angeles, they either try to get past U.S. immigration with fake documents or destroy their documents and apply for asylum.

INS officials must first confirm undocumented aliens’ identities. Then, officials with knowledge of China’s human rights conditions assess their asylum claims to see if they are legally entitled to remain.

Previously, most Chinese asylum applicants said that if they returned home, they would face punishment for violating their country’s one-child policy. Now many claim to be members of the outlawed Falun Gong spiritual group. About 13% of Chinese applying for asylum in the U.S. are approved, Meissner said.