160 Rescued From Sinking Fishing Boat : Immigration: Coast Guard and INS officials suspect the passengers, most of them Chinese nationals, may have been trying to enter the country illegally.

After a dramatic high seas rescue, a Panamanian freighter arrived in Los Angeles Harbor Saturday with 160 bedraggled passengers--almost all Chinese nationals--who may have been attempting to illegally enter the United States aboard a fishing boat.

Federal authorities said several of those aboard the freighter were suffering from dehydration, but the rest were in good condition after the freighter rescued them from a U.S.-flagged fishing boat Friday morning.

The 70-foot fishing vessel, based in Northern California, sank 230 miles west of Pt. Conception after reportedly being adrift for several days.

Officials with the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Coast Guard are investigating whether the incident marks the latest example of a growing immigrant-smuggling industry that, in the past year alone, has resulted in the arrests of hundreds of Chinese nationals aboard vessels off the Southern California coast.

“It’s very premature to make any connection to any instances like that,” said Jim Hayes, assistant director for anti-smuggling in the Los Angeles office of the INS. But Hayes told a news conference at the Coast Guard’s Terminal Island station that authorities could not help but question the circumstances surrounding the rescue.

“We have a lot of questions about why all those people were out there,” Hayes told reporters. “Normally, you don’t see 160 people on a 70-foot vessel.”

The rescue, authorities said, began shortly after 5 a.m. Friday when the fishing boat, New Star, issued a radio call for help that was answered by the 500-foot freighter Forestal Esmeralda. The fishing boat, with a six-member crew, reported that it was sinking after having collided with a larger ship early last week, the Coast Guard said.

After that collision, the fishing boat reported, it was forced to take on more than 100 passengers from the larger vessel. Authorities said they were skeptical of that story but planned to question the survivors about what had happened on their journey across the Pacific.

As the freighter answered the distress call, two U.S. Navy ships, the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln and guided missile cruiser Goldsborough were diverted to assist the rescue. A Coast Guard C-130 transport plane also helped, dropping life rafts to the sinking fishing boat.

After the rescue, a Coast Guard helicopter flew a doctor to the freighter to check the condition of the passengers and crew. The physician reported that several people were weak from dehydration but that the others were in good condition.

In all, immigration officials said, 158 Chinese nationals were aboard the ship--143 adult men; seven adult women, and the rest boys under 18. The other two passengers were Vietnamese men.

When the freighter docked in the Port of Los Angeles late Saturday, the passengers were escorted to waiting buses for the short trip to the INS Detention Facility on Terminal Island. Some of them barefoot, many of them sunburned and weary, the passengers were somber and silent as they were shepherded to the buses, a process that lasted from just before sunset to well after dark.

The crew and passengers of the fishing boat were being questioned Saturday at the INS facility and were expected to remain there through today.

There have been at least seven cases--three in Los Angeles, three in Hawaii and one in North Carolina--within the last year in which INS officials have uncovered smuggling operations involving Chinese immigrants.

One year ago this month, 132 Chinese were detained in Los Angeles. And in another case in February, authorities seized a Taiwanese fishing boat and arrested 85 immigrants from China after raiding the vessel two miles off Long Beach.

Those 85 immigrants reported that they were from the Chinese province of Fujian. The province, about 100 miles from Taiwan, was also said to be the home of the 158 Chinese nationals detained for questioning on Saturday.

Said one INS official: “This could be one of the biggest (Chinese immigrant-smuggling cases) so far, and I don’t suspect it will be the last.”