Human smuggling racket smashed

Undercover agents infiltrated a human smuggling ring run through Hong Kong, Europe and Jamaica to smash a racket ferrying mainland illegal immigrants to the US, officials there said on Saturday

The alleged snakeheads were arrested in Miami, accused of flying mainlanders from Fujian to the US on doctored Japanese passports, Immigration and Customs officers said. Charges had also been laid against a Hong Kong man believed to be one of the ring's organisers, fugitive Winson Zheng.

James Goldman, assistant director of the US Immigration and Naturalisation Service's Miami district, said authorities became suspicious when they noticed an unusually high number Chinese entering Miami from the Caribbean with forged passports. They travelled in groups of three or four, posing as Japanese tourists.

He said the ring charged mainlanders, mostly women from Fujian province, about US$50,000 (HK$390,000) for passage to New York City on a series of flights which often went to through Hong Kong, Vietnam or Laos to Europe before going on to the Caribbean and Miami.