I'd Like to Find Out More About This
June 6, 1993, the "Golden Venture" (renamed and reflagged migrant smuggling ship) intentionally run aground off the coast of NYC...
(Thank you Pictramap)
Before long, the fat man was meeting with the chief American officer with the INS in Hong Kong, a man in his early forties named Jerry Stuchiner (Jeremiah Wolf Stuchiner if you go by facebook, 51 friends as of this w), short and pugnacious, with a dark goatee and coke bottle glasses that exaggerated the size of his eyes, Stuchiner had a reputation among those who knew him as a bit of a Walter Mitty. He loved the drama and intrigue of the job and was always gunning to be the hero of the operation - the man kicking down the door. His parents had survived the Holocaust in Poland by pretending they were Roman Catholics and had subsequently moved to Israel, where Stuchiner was born. Stuchiner told people he had been awarded a bronze star for his valor in Vietnam as a marine corps medic, though, in reality, he had never made it through boot camp. Like many of his INS colleagues, he spent some early years in the Border Patrol. He married the daughter of a Mexican landowner before transferring to San Francisco to work for the INS. Stuchiner was ambitious. He studied law at night and applied for a job at the CIA but was rejected because of his poor eyesight.
Get briefed here.
The legal battles went on for years. Some of them -- 35 by one count -- were granted asylum. A few received artist's visas, a result of the intricate artwork many of the detainees made in prison from scraps of paper. A dozen accepted an offer from several South American countries to relocate there. Ninety-nine gave up and opted to be deported back to China, unable to tolerate incarceration.
Some thing to seek out on my next visit to the big apple. Reading other pages, looks like they were taught during their stay by Wu Luo Zhong, a theater set designer.
Other things you get from Patrick Radden Keefe's thriller "The Snakehead" :
People on the ship were getting one meal a day and one cup of water per day and, as a result, having one bowel movement per week and grown men were crying while having it.
One of the pit stops the ship made was in Mombasa, Kenya - former Portugeese colony. The passengers were in limbo for a while here as well. Some of them started a Chinese restaurant there and it succeeded and, eventually, some of them decide to make their home there. Wow.
After the sighting of the Golden Venture :
...where Emergency Medical Services had set up a triage station. But it was too late. Both men were DOA.
Even as he sat there with the corpses of these strangers, Mundy marveled at the resolve it must have required to expire on land and not at sea. The men had walked up out of the water. collapsed on the beach, and died.
Stream Peter Cohn's documentary here.
Another tidbit :
Throughout the 1990's snakeheads everywhere were diversified, evolving new routes to take customers to new places and always adapting so they stayed a step or two ahead of law enforcement. Even a partial listing of the routes that law enforcement discovered during those years reads like the bizarre itinerary of some madcap world tour : Fuzhou, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Moscow, Havana, Managua, Tucson. Fuzhou, HK, Bang, KL, Singa , Dubai, Frankfurt, Washington.
Graft within the INS :
Before long, the fat man was meeting with the chief American officer with the INS in Hong Kong, a man in his early forties named Jerry Stuchiner (Jeremiah Wolf Stuchiner if you go by facebook, 51 friends as of this w), short and pugnacious, with a dark goatee and coke bottle glasses that exaggerated the size of his eyes, Stuchiner had a reputation among those who knew him as a bit of a Walter Mitty. He loved the drama and intrigue of the job and was always gunning to be the hero of the operation - the man kicking down the door. His parents had survived the Holocaust in Poland by pretending they were Roman Catholics and had subsequently moved to Israel, where Stuchiner was born. Stuchiner told people he had been awarded a bronze star for his valor in Vietnam as a marine corps medic, though, in reality, he had never made it through boot camp. Like many of his INS colleagues, he spent some early years in the Border Patrol. He married the daughter of a Mexican landowner before transferring to San Francisco to work for the INS. Stuchiner was ambitious. He studied law at night and applied for a job at the CIA but was rejected because of his poor eyesight.
Long story short, eventually caught working as a link in the chain of the illegal operation - caught red handed with five blank Honduran Passports in Hong Kong. Pleaded guilty and sentenced to about three years around the time of the handover to China. US pleads for his return to US on account of the sensitive info he has that could be pounded out of him by the Chinese and, gets freed to US and does no more jail time.
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