March 15, 2002 – Police apprehended eight illegal aliens on Friday near Estate Harmony on St. Thomas, Deputy Chief Theodore Carty said. He had no further information, but a passerby said those taken into custody appeared to be Asian.
Carty said the police turned the eight persons over to the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service for processing. Efforts to learn more information from INS in Puerto Rico, where all calls to the local office are routinely referred, were unsuccessful.
Typically in such cases, aliens are charged with illegal entry. INS officials have said that the territory sees about 500 to 600 illegal aliens a year. Most come ashore on St. John, but some, as was the case Friday, arrive at remote beaches on St. Thomas and St. Croix.
Most are Chinese or Haitian, but there also have been people from Colombia, the Middle East and elsewhere. The Chinese often come from their homeland's Fujian Province, where they have paid smugglers as much as $50,000 for the trip. Their goal is to reach the U.S. mainland.
