The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream (54 page)

87
As fall became winter:
INS transcript, interview with James Dullan, undated.

87
“The river is rough”:
Transcript, INS and Niagara Regional Police Force interview with Richard Kephart, April 18, 1989.

87
On the night of December 30:
INS memorandum of investigation, “Malaysian Investigation,” March 10, 1989.

87
He could see the light:
Transcript, INS and Niagara Regional Police Force interview with Richard Kephart, April 18, 1989.

87
Normally it took Paul:
Warner, “88 Deaths in River.”

88
He had been late before:
INS transcript, interview with James Dullan, undated.

88
Then they heard something:
Ibid. Kephart initially denied that he thought he heard a scream, but then conceded that indeed he had. INS transcript, interview with Richard Kephart, April 13, 1989.

88
“That might have come”:
INS transcript, interview with James Dullan, April 13, 1989.

88
Dullan could tell:
Ibid.

88
They kept waiting:
INS memorandum of investigation, “Malaysian Investigation,” March 6, 1989.

88
Paul had gone down to the river:
Transcript, INS and Niagara Regional Police Force interview with Richard Kephart, April 18, 1989.

88
“The raft overturned”:
Ibid.

88.
There had been four:
Warner, “88 Deaths in River.”

89.
Sometimes Paul used:
Ibid.

89
They never made it:
Ibid.

89
In fact, well before the drowning:
Unless otherwise indicated, all material
relating to Patrick Devine’s investigation of Sister Ping derives from an interview with Patrick Devine, June 12, 2007.

90
Devine told the Swiftwater investigators:
INS memorandum of investigation, “Operation Rounder,” January 25, 1989.

90
“The organization appears”:
INS, “Operation Swiftwater.”

90
Then suddenly:
Details of Larry Hays undercover operation at the Toronto airport are drawn from an interview with Larry Hay, December 23, 2005, Larry Hays testimony in the Sister Ping trial, and the personal notes that Hay took following the incident at the airport on March 28, 1989, a copy of which he gave to me.

90.
Then she and her daughter:
United States v. Tommy Kong, CR 89 46 A (WDNY), Memorandum of Law by AUSA Kathleen Mehltretter, November 3, 1989.

91.
Several months later:
Interview with Larry Hay, December 23, 2005.

91
After she was transferred:
Interview with Patrick Devine, June 12, 2007.

91
Sister Ping did not want:
Ibid.

91
Finally, on June 27:
Defendants proposed statement of admitted facts, United States v. Chui-Ping Cheng, CR 89 46A (Buffalo, NY), June 27, 1990.

91
A few weeks later:
Rule 40 affidavit by INS Agent Peter Hoelter, U.S. v. Yick Tak Cheung, aka “Billy,” 89 CR 113, July 11, 1989.

91
Paul and his wife:
INS, “Operation Swiftwater.”

91
He was different:
Interview with Patrick Devine, June 12, 2007.

91
But many of the investigators:
Ibid. Bill McMurry also expressed the view that because Sister Ping almost always ended up being behind whatever criminal activity her husband engaged in, the likelihood that Yick Tak had somehow independently developed his own smuggling route in partnership with Sister Ping’s brother-in-law and that Sister Ping did not play some guiding role in the operation was exceedingly low.

92
In September a Buffalo federal judge:
“Alien-Smuggler,”
Canadian Press
, September 11, 1990.

92
“I knew what I did”:
Ibid.

92
She volunteered again:
Sentencing hearing, United States v. Chui-Ping Cheng, CR 89 46A, June 20, 1991.

92
She gave Devine:
Interview with Patrick Devine, June 12, 2007.

92
Nevertheless, the government:
Sentencing hearing, United States v. Chui-Ping Cheng.

92
“I’m either the fourth”:
Ibid.

93
Goldenberg pointed to:
Defendant’s statement concerning sentence reduction, United States v. Chui-Ping Cheng, CR 89 46A (Buffalo, NY), May 20, 1991.

93
The prosecutor objected:
Sentencing hearing, United States v. Chui-Ping Cheng.

93
But the incident wasn’t:
Ibid.

93
When her lawyers:
Ibid.

93.
In March 1991:
“Smuggler of Illegal Aliens Sentenced,” Associated Press, March 26, 1991.

94.
Even so, Yick Tak somehow:
Docket in U.S. v. Cheung Yick Tak, a/k/a “Billy,” 89 CR 113.

94
She hated it:
Interview with Special Agent Peter Lee, FBI, January 31, 2006.

94
She was bitter:
Sister Ping sentencing remarks.

94
Goldenberg had asked:
Defendant’s statement concerning sentence reduction, United States v. Chui-Ping Cheng.

94
She did have one regular:
Interview with Peter Lee, January 31, 2006.

95
“Sister Ping had to keep working”:
Interview with Patrick Devine, June 12, 2007.

95
Upon her release:
Written declaration of Special Agent Peter Lee in a sealed federal criminal complaint against Cheng Chui Ping and Cheng Yick Tak, Southern District of New York, December 1994.

CHAPTER 6: YEAR OF THE SNAKE

This chapter is based on interviews with current and former officials from the FBI, the INS, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as well as interviews in Fujian and Chinatown with individuals who came illegally to the United States during the years in question or had other encounters with the snakehead trade. On the growth of the human smuggling business, I relied on the records of several congressional investigations, which are cited in the notes. On the partnership between Sister Ping and the Fuk Ching gang, I drew on the testimony during Sister Ping’s trial of Weng Yu Hui and Ah Kay, as well as Ah Kay’s deputies Cho Yee Yeung and Li Xing Hua. Ah Kay’s testimony in another trial, United States v. Zhang Zi Da and Zhang Zi Mei, 96 CR 44 (1996), was also valuable.

97
The most widely reproduced:
See Dana Calvo, “Profile in Courage,”
Smithsonian Magazine
, January 19, 2004.

97
On June 5:
Secretary of States Morning Summary for June 5, 1989, declassified and released by the National Security Archive at George Washington University.

98
Bush had assumed:
Unless otherwise noted, material on George H. W. Bush’s experience in China and his reaction to the events at Tiananmen Square is drawn from George Bush and Brent Scowcroft,
A World Transformed
(New York: Vintage, 1998), pp. 90–99.

99
Bush’s commitment to harboring:
Executive Order 12711, “Policy Implementation with Respect to Nationals of the People’s Republic of China,” April 11, 1990. The text of the order reads:

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and laws of the United States of America, the Attorney General and the Secretary of State are hereby ordered to exercise their authority, including that under the Immigration and Nationality Act), as follows:

Section 1. The Attorney General is directed to take any steps necessary to defer until January 1, 1994, the enforced departure of all nationals of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and their dependents who were in the United States on or after June 5, 1989, up to and including the date of this order (hereinafter “such PRC nationals”).

Sec. 2. The Secretary of State and the Attorney General are directed to take all steps necessary with respect to such PRC nationals (a) to waive through January 1, 1994, the requirement of a valid passport and (b) to process and provide necessary documents, both within the United States and at U.S. consulates overseas, to facilitate travel across the borders of other nations and reentry into the United States in the same status such PRC nationals had upon departure.

Sec. 3. The Secretary of State and the Attorney General are directed to provide the following protections:

(a).irrevocable waiver of the 2-year home country residence requirement that may be exercised until January 1, 1994, for such PRC nationals;

(b).maintenance of lawful status for purposes of adjustment of status or change of nonimmigrant status
for such PRC nationals who were in lawful status at any time on or after June 5, 1989, up to and including the date of this order;

(c) authorization for employment of such PRC nationals through January 1, 1994; and

(d) notice of expiration of nonimmigrant status (if applicable) rather than the institution of deportation proceedings, and explanation of options available for such PRC nationals eligible for deferral of enforced departure whose nonimmigrant status has expired.

Sec. 4. The Secretary of State and the Attorney General are directed to provide for enhanced consideration under the immigration laws for individuals from any country who express a fear of persecution upon return to their country related to that country’s policy of forced abortion or coerced sterilization, as implemented by the Attorney Generals regulation effective January 29, 1990.

Sec. 5. The Attorney General is directed to ensure that the Immigration and Naturalization Service finalizes and makes public its position on the issue of training for individuals in F-1 visa status and on the issue of reinstatement into lawful nonimmigrant status of such PRC nationals who have withdrawn their applications for asylum.

Sec. 6. The Departments of Justice and State are directed to consider other steps to assist such PRC nationals in their efforts to utilize the protections that I have extended pursuant to this order.

Sec. 7. This order shall be effective immediately.

George Bush
The White House,
April 11, 1990

99
There were roughly:
John Pomfret, “Smuggled Chinese Enrich Homeland, Gangs,”
Washington Post
, January 24, 1999.

99.
Reports from inside:
See Matthew Connelly,
Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 339–60. For further material on the history of China’s one-child policy, see Susan Greenhalgh and Edwin A. Winckler,
Governing China’s Population: From Leninist to Neoliberal Biopolitics
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005); and Tyrene White,
China’s Longest Campaign: Birth Planning in the People’s Republic, 1949–2005
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006).

100.
The effects of the order:
Malcolm Gladwell and Rachel E. Stassen-Berger, “U.S. Policy Seen Encouraging Wave of Chinese Immigration,”
Washington Post
, June 13, 1993.

100
“The Fujianese thank two people”
: Interview with Philip Lam, November 9, 2005.

101
It was said in New York’s Chinatown:
Interview with Dr. Tang Xiao Xiong in Fuzhou, China, February 21, 2008. Dr. Tang lived in New York’s Chinatown during the years in question and ran a medical practice that catered to the city’s undocumented Fujianese.

101
The number of Chinese nationals:
“Asian Organized Crime,” p. 418.

101
“Everybody went crazy”:
Sing Tao Daily
, December 2, 1996, as quoted in Chin,
Smuggled Chinese
, p. 9.

101
Over the past half-century:
United Nations High Commission for Refugees,
UNHCR Resettlement Handbook
. Available at
UNHCR.org
.

101
In the past thirty-five years alone:
Ellen R. Sauerbrey, assistant secretary of state for population, refugees, and migration, “Providing Help and Hope
Around the World,”
Foreign Policy Agenda
12, no. 2 (February 2007): 51.

101
In fact, of the top thirteen countries:
United Nations High Commission for Refugees, “Refugees by Numbers, 2006 Edition” (pamphlet). The United States accepted 53,813 refugees in 2006. The next twelve countries—in order, Australia, Canada, Sweden, Finland, Norway, New Zealand, Denmark, the Netherlands, the UK, Ireland, Brazil, and Chile—accepted a total of 26,889.

102
The United Nations established:
United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, 1951; United Nations Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, 1967.

102
More people were seeking:
Christopher Dickey, “Carter Seeking Major Revision of Refugee Laws,”
Washington Post
, March 8, 1979.

102
With the Refugee Act of 1980:
See 8 U.S.C. §1101(a)(42) and 8 U.S.C. §1157 (a)(1).

102
They were less concerned:
David M. Riemers,
Still the Golden Door: The Third World Comes to America
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), p. 201.

102
The law envisioned:
The 5,000 figure technically refers not to the anticipated number of people who will be granted asylum each year but to the number of asylees who will be granted permanent citizenship. For a full account of the legislative history of the act, see Edward M. Kennedy, “Refugee Act of 1980,”
International Migration Review
(Spring/Summer, 1981): 141–56.

102
Almost immediately:
Riemers,
Still the Golden Door
, p. 201.

102
By the time the Bush executive order:
Ira H. Mehlman, “The New Jet Set,”
National Review
, March 15, 1993.

103
If you showed up:
Ibid.