Golden Venture

Golden Venture was a 147-foot-long (45 m) cargo ship that smuggled 286 undocumented immigrants from China (mostly Fuzhou people from Fujian province) along with 13 crew members that ran aground on the beach at Fort Tilden on the Rockaway peninsula of Queens, New York on June 6, 1993, at around 2 a.m. The ship had sailed from Bangkok, Thailand, stopped in Kenya and rounded the Cape of Good Hope, then headed northwest across the Atlantic Ocean to New York City on its four-month voyage. Ten people drowned in their attempts to flee the ship that had run aground and get to shore in the United States.

The survivors were taken into custody by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and were held in various prisons throughout the U.S. while they applied for the right of asylum. Roughly 10% were granted asylum after U.S. Representative William Goodling entreated President Bill Clinton; minors were released, while about half the remainder were deported (some being accepted by South American countries). Some remained in immigration prison for years fighting their cases, the majority in York, Pennsylvania. The final 52 persons were released by President Clinton on February 27, 1997, after four years in prison.^[4]

This case was an early test of the system of detaining asylum-seekers in prisons, a practice that continues in the U.S., Australia, and the United Kingdom. It was also notable because some detainees created more than 10,000 folk art sculptures or Chinese paper folding, papier-mâché, and recycled materials while in York County Prison; these were later exhibited throughout the U.S. and sold to offset legal costs.^[5]