10 Chinese Nabbed After Coming Ashore in O.C.

Clinging to a Styrofoam raft and a handful of life jackets, 10 Chinese nationals paddled ashore in the predawn darkness to a trailer park near Newport Beach, where they were spotted by teenagers at a party and later caught by police.

The men, naked and shivering, were spotted about 2 a.m. wading onshore at El Morro Beach as a group of teenage girls celebrated an elementary school reunion at a beachfront trailer.

The teens saw the men hurriedly dress into clothes they were carrying--designer jeans, sweatshirts, even sport coats and business suits--then head for the nearest main road.

Over the next four hours, police and federal immigration officers spread out across Newport Beach and Laguna Beach. They caught all 10 men, ending what officials described as a clandestine 7,000-mile odyssey from mainland China.

“We just thought they were partying and skinny-dipping in the ocean,” said Bridgett Saeman, one of the teenagers who saw the men arrive. “But they were opening up packages and bags of dry clothes and putting new clothes on.”

Several of the men were found walking along Pacific Coast Highway, while at least two made it all the way up to UC Irvine, five miles away. Police said they scoured the waters for anyone who might have drowned or become lost at sea but believe none of the group that swam to shore was missing.

Authorities said the men, in their 20s and 30s, traveled from China by ship, switching vessels at least once in Taiwan before getting off their last vessel somewhere close to the California coast. About 4 p.m., U.S. Coast Guard officials were preparing to board a fishing vessel they believe might have dropped off the men.

Immigration officials said the men will at the very least face deportation, as long as they were not involved in any other criminal activity. As of Thursday afternoon, none of the men had sought political asylum, said officials with the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Katie Gottron, 19, was on the deck of a friend’s beachfront trailer when she noticed a group of naked men scramble to shore. Thinking they were having fun, she called her friends, and they decided to invite the men to their party.

They noticed the men opening plastic bags filled with new clothes. The girls tried speaking to them but were ignored. Bridgett Saeman ran back to her trailer and told her father what they had seen.

“She said to me, ‘Dad, there’s a bunch of naked Chinese men in front of our house.’ I said, ‘Bridgett, c’mon! You’ve been keeping me up all night already,’” said Terry Saeman, 47.

Saeman put on a white bathrobe, grabbed a diving light and ventured out. He saw the men sitting on one of his neighbor’s decks, some of them smoking cigarettes. As he drew closer, they fled, heading for Pacific Coast Highway.

Saeman called police. Then, he, his daughter and her friends combed the beach, discovering a 4-by-4-foot Styrofoam float and a few buoys. Some water bottles with Chinese labels lay empty.

Meanwhile, a sheriff’s deputy saw the group along a main road and detained one man as the rest scattered. Two more were caught nearby.

Police warned businesses open at that hour to be on the lookout for the men. Dozens of officers formed a five-mile dragnet, using police dogs and helicopters to search roads and nearby scrubland.

Five more men were caught hiding in brush near Crystal Cove State Beach. The remaining two were picked up near the San Joaquin Hills tollway and Bonita Canyon Drive. All were described as in good physical condition.

During questioning, the men said they spent a month traveling by ship from China. They told police they had expected to meet a man whose name sounded like “Otto.” A police videotape of the interviews shows that the men remained unemotional throughout. They asked only for cigarettes--a request that was denied.

Police said the group was probably dropped off close to the shore because they could not have survived for long in the 60-degree water. Authorities also said lifesaving equipment the men had used was emblazoned with the name “Fu Ching,” which means Lucky Star, possibly the name of the ship the men were smuggled aboard.

Coast Guard officials spotted a fishing vessel bearing the same name about 100 miles off San Diego and prepared to board it.

While thousands of Chinese immigrants are smuggled into the United States each year, experts said the men’s journey was far from typical.

Sea travel was the route of choice a decade ago, but recent crackdowns by the U.S. Coast Guard and Chinese government on sea smugglers has made the trip much more perilous, said Ko-Lin Chin, professor of criminal justice at Rutgers University and author of “Smuggled Chinese.”

Most illegal Chinese immigrants, he said, now pay as much as $70,000 for flights into the country or take ships to other countries before crossing the border by land, usually through Mexico.

Recent high-profile cases of immigrants smuggled in by sea involved travelers hidden in container ships during their journey across the Pacific. Officials said this case is unusual because the men were dropped off far from a major port and were expected to swim to shore.

“It’s extremely rare,” INS spokesman Francisco Arcaute said. “It’s happened on the East Coast, but not often on the West Coast.”

Experts estimate that at least 20,000 Chinese nationals try to enter the United States illegally each year. Most, they said, leave from Fujian province, north of Hong Kong, and come looking for a better economic future.

Though lucrative for smugglers, the travel can be dangerous, especially by sea. Immigrants are often forced to travel in ramshackle boats and are housed in squalid conditions.

“It’s modern-day slave ships that we’re talking about,” INS spokesman Bill Strassberger said.

Still, many make the trip, frequently without success. Last year, 23 stowaways were found hiding in the hold of a Chinese ship berthed in the Port of Long Beach. The year before, 48 immigrants were found in cargo containers in the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles.

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Times staff writer Kimi Yoshino contributed to this report.