Jun 7, 2008 12:00 am US/Eastern
CBS 2 Classic: Golden Venture Runs Aground Off NYC
Nearly 300 Chinese Immigrants Wanted A Shot At Life In U.S.; What They Got Instead Was A Harrowing Experience
Tragedy Leads To Capture Of 'Mother Of All Snakeheads'
NEW YORK (CBS) ―
"They were jumping off, climbing down the ladder and jumping into the water with their world possessions in bags and buckets." It was a daring act from desperate people. At just after 2 a.m. on June 6, 1993, the U.S. Coast Guard office in Rockaway Beach got the call. A freighter had run aground and up to 300 people were thought to be flailing in the water.
They were told they were coming to America, but once they got here they were told to run. And once they started to run they were on their own.
"These people were in their underwear. Some of them didn't have anything on," one Coast Guard diver said on the day of the tragedy.
The 200-foot freighter was registered in Bangkok, Thailand. Its name was the Golden Venture. By the time the ordeal was over, 10 of the 286 people aboard were dead. The ship's captain and 12-man crew were arrested after a mutiny led to the rickety old ship losing its bearings and running aground on a sand bar.
The international incident eventually led authorities to a woman known for her notorious human trafficking empire.
Click here to see the initial CBS 2 report on the day of the tragedy It wasn't long before U.S. Immigration officials found out that the ship's cargo wasn't golden, but human, mainly stowaways from mainland China. It wasn't a surprise, just a new port for undocumented aliens.
"To our knowledge, this was the first vessel in the New York area (carrying illegals) because traditionally they are landing on the West Coast," an Immigration official told CBS 2.
One the ship ran aground, members of the crew started forcing the immigrants overboard. That horror turned into desperation later as, despite rescue operations being underway, dozens of people onboard the freighter were still trying to jump off and into the water to elude capture.
Click here for a June 7, 1993 report on the mutiny that led to the freighter running agroundOfficials could be heard on radios asking for immigration agents that spoke Chinese to get into helicopters so they could get messages to the people on the ship.
New York City Mayor David Dinkins and NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly arrived on the shore and by dawn the early light showed the dejected faces of the aliens sitting in rows on the sand, wrapped in blankets with bewildered looks on their weather-beaten faces.
"They were coming up on the shore by the dozens and we were pulling them in as they came off the water," a Coast Guard official told CBS 2.
"There was a lot of gagging going on, a lot of distress."
One Asian-American police officer spoke to some of the immigrants in a Mandarin Chinese dialect. He told CBS 2 he was stunned to hear how they had no sense of how much time they had been in the cargo hold.
Click here for a June 7, 1993 report on the deplorable conditions inside the cargo hold"Most of them have no idea how long they've been on because they were in the cargo hold for so long," the officer said. "The only people I spoke to that gave me numbers said it was well over 3 ½ months.
"They left their homes, their families, everybody back home. They got out."
Early on, immigration agents were cautious about boarding the vessel, waiting to make sure they were properly armed. Those stowaways who did accept rescue assistance, including some women, left the ship with knapsacks or plastic bags on their backs. The simple belongings of others just washed up on the beach, including air mail stationary that was probably packed for a letter home.
Their plight touched city officials.
"I think you're heart goes out to them. You don't know the circumstances that brought them here," Kelly said.
Dinkins was clearly moved by the great lengths the illegal aliens went to just to get a fighting chance at a life in America.
"These are people who apparently, desperately, are trying to come to America," Dinkins said. "And I would hope that those people already here would recognize how important the freedom is that they have here."
This case was an early test of the system of detaining asylum-seekers in prisons, a practice which has continued in the U.S., Australia and Great Britain.
The survivors were taken into custody by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service and were held in prisons throughout the country while applying for political asylum. Some were granted asylum, but many were deported. The ordeal did not end until Feb. 27, 1997, when President Bill Clinton released the final 52 being held.
On June 22, 2005, Cheng Chui Ping, known as the "mother of all snakeheads" due to her vaunted human trafficking network, was convicted for trafficking illegal immigrants and money laundering. On March 17, 2006, she was sentenced to the maximum of 35 years in federal prison despite her protests that she was forced to carry out the work by Triad gangs.
Cheng was thought to be responsible for the trafficking of many Chinese immigrants into NYC's Chinatown throughout the 1990s. Those she is said to have helped get in would have owed her thousands of dollars. Cheng's network was said to be at one time worth $40 million.
Click here to see a June 6, 1993 report on human traffickingThe Golden Venture itself was later deliberately sunk off the coast of Florida by the U.S. government.
(© MMVIII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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