Copyright 2000 The Times-Picayune Publishing Co.
Times-Picayune (New Orleans, LA)
August 23, 2000 Wednesday, ORLEANS
SECTION: NATIONAL; Pg. 01
LENGTH: 1262 words
HEADLINE: GIVING A SHIP THE SLIP; TEMPTATION SOMETIMES PROVES TOO MUCH FOR FOREIGN CREWMEN
BYLINE: By Richard Sine West Bank bureau
BODY:
As his cargo ship sailed for Tampa, Fla., its first port-of-call in the United States, Turkish ship captain Ersen Oguz gave his crew a stern warning.
"I told my crew, don't believe anyone here, the Mafia, or Turkish families. It's very dangerous," Oguz said as he sat in the captain's quarters of his vessel, the Yusuf Kalkavan, which was moored at General Anchorage in Arabi last week.
The warning had little effect. One crewman disappeared in Tampa in late July. The second never returned from an evening of relaxation last week in the French Quarter with seven shipmates. Oguz estimated that as many of four fifths of Turkish boats entering the United States lose a crewman at some port. They come here in search of a job, an American girl or family, he said.
"Turkish people like the U.S.," he said.
The figure of the desperate, furtive stowaway is well-known to the public. More than two dozen stowaways from the Dominican Republic were found in the hold of a Venezuelan freighter in New Orleans last month and returned to their native land. But crewmen are a much bigger source of illegal immigration, federal statistics show. In the fiscal year that ended October 1999, the Border Patrol reported 219 deserters in southeast Louisiana alone.
In a dramatic example last month, six young Turkish crewmen anchored at Arabi waited for the cover of night and a passing rainstorm before jumping into the Mississippi River's swift and dangerous currents. The next day, two boys playing on an Algiers levee found a black wallet containing little more than an identification card and a few Turkish coins. U.S. Border Patrol agents said it was the only evidence that at least one man had survived the escape.
Despite their often desperate backgrounds and difficult working conditions, only a tiny fraction of the roughly 7,000 foreign crewmen who pass through New Orleans each month jump ship. Immigration officials search for crewmen who disappear, but only 18 of last year's deserters were found. Border Patrol agents believe an underground network with ties to organized crime could be at work, though they have little direct evidence.
Less than two hours after Oguz reported a deserter, Border Patrol Agent Michael Gonzales boarded his ship. Gonzales scoured every inch of the crewman's tiny cabin. The man had packed his bag, but had left it in a closet. He left a Muslim prayer book in the bag, and a poster of a nude woman under some bed sheets in a drawer. But he didn't leave any letters, addresses or other information that might have pointed to where he could have gone in the United States.
The deserter's shipmates said they were baffled about why a 38-year-old man with a wife and child in Turkey would have deserted ship. They said they did not know whether he has relatives in the United States. But many of the shipmates did not speak English. And even if they did know where he was going, Gonzales said, many wouldn't have told him. "A lot of times these guys aren't going to rat on each other," Gonzales said. "Then you go out to sea for six months, and it's, 'So, you're the rat?'"
As so often happens, Gonzales was working a cold trail. Oguz had waited a day before reporting the man missing. Often captains don't learn of deserters until a crewman doesn't report for a shift, or a vessel is about to leave, Border Patrol agents say.
"A lot of times this is how investigations end, unless he's caught down the road, or his relatives get mad at him and rat him out," said Gonzales, who requested that the deserter not be identified.
-- Plenty of reasons to desert --
Ministers and union officials who work with crewmen say there are nearly as many reasons for desertion as crewmen who desert.
"We try to talk them out of it," said Gilbert Smith, a ship's chaplain at the Stella Maris Maritime Center, a crewmen's ministry program of the Catholic Archdiocese. "In America, the streets are not paved with gold, and there is not a free woman on every corner."
One deserter, named Igor, was a longtime crewman, who had been told he would be drafted into a civil war upon return to his home, the former Soviet state of Georgia. When he was issued a shore pass by immigration authorities after landing in New Orleans in 1994, Igor simply packed his bags, walked off his tanker and took a cab to the West Bank, where he hid at a hotel for a few days until his ship departed.
Igor, who declined to give his last name, has since married an American citizen and received a green card allowing him to drive a cab. Asked whether he was happier here, Igor said: "I think it's better than sitting in a trench and shooting at someone you don't know and don't have a problem with."
Most deserting crewmen are escaping poverty or oppression in their home countries, Smith said. Crewmen on some ships are warned of retaliation on their shipmates, or on their families back home, if they desert, he said.
Poor conditions on board also can inspire desertions, said John Sansone, a seafarer's union official who has worked at the New Orleans port. Sansone said some crewmen desert to avoid maltreatment or even sexual harassment from superiors.
Other crewmen are not paid for extended periods, Sansone said. On the Eber, the Turkish-flag ship from which the Turkish crewmen jumped last month, crewmen complained they had not been paid for two months, Border Patrol agents said.
"If the condition of the ship is bad and the morale of the crew is down, some guys just can't take it any more," said Sansone, of the International Transport Workers Federation.
In an effort to prevent crewmen from illegally immigrating to the United States, crewmen are screened twice by federal officials before they are legally permitted to walk down the gangplank in New Orleans. But some who work with seafarers said the system is neither effective nor particularly humane.
To prevent both stowaways and deserters, ship owners often refuse to inform crews of their destination until the ship sets sail, Evans said. Oguz said he typically does not know his ship's next destination until informed by the shipping line while at sea. The owners believe crewmen will have a harder time planning a desertion when they're already at sea, Evans said.
And advance planning appears to be the key to a successful desertion, officials said. Most deserters skip town as fast as possible, headed to meet family or friends, or to a city with an ethnic community where they would blend in, Border Patrol agent Steven Gardner said.
"This is a thing that is well thought out," Gardner said. "They know where they're going and how to get there."
It is not uncommon to hear from those in the shipping world about rumors of human smuggling of both stowaways and deserters. Oguz warned his crew of locals who offer crewmen sanctuary and employment for a few months and then turn them over to authorities. "The Mafia uses these crews," he said.
Gonzales said human-smuggling rings are suspected to be involved in mass desertions, though smugglers have not been arrested locally. Gonzales has seen as many as a dozen crewmen disappear from a single ship in the New Orleans port. Typically, smugglers charge exorbitant fees, forcing the immigrant into a form of indentured servitude, he said. The smugglers threaten retaliation if the immigrant doesn't pay up, he said.
"No doubt we do have human cargo being smuggling into the port....." Gonzales said. "They could be meeting up with a van, someone gives them a ticket to New York, and poof, they're gone."
GRAPHIC: STAFF PHOTOS BY SUSAN POAG Border Patrol Agent Michael Gonzalez heads down the gangplank of the cargo ship Yusuf Kalkavan on the Mississippi River near Algiers. He is investigating the disappearance of a Turkish sailor who went on leave last week and never returned. Top, Gonzales searches the missing sailor's bunk for clues to his whereabouts. 'A lot of times this is how investigations end, unless he's caught down the road, or his relatives get mad at him and rat him out,' Gonzales said. STAFF PHOTOS BY SUSAN POAG A Turkish flag flies on the deck of the Yusuf Kalkavan in the river near Algiers. Most deserting crewmen are escaping poverty or oppression in their home countries, said Gilbert Smith, a ship's chaplain at the Stella Maris Maritime Center, a crewmen's ministry program of the Catholic Archdiocese. Captain Ersen Oguz, left, of the Yusuf Kalkavan talks with Border Patrol Agent Michael Gonzales about a missing crewman. 'I told my crew, don't believe anyone here, the Mafia, or Turkish families,' Oguz said.
LOAD-DATE: August 23, 2000