People Smuggling

In 2000 or 2001 a number of shipping containers showed up at Harbor Island filled not with stereos and Nikes, but with hopeful new residents. Local author Jonathan Raban was so affected by the human smuggling operation at that time that he wrote it as central to his 2003 novel Waxwings in which an entrepreneurial-minded transplant from "Everett" arrives on our shores the sole surviver of a similar container cruise and sets about making good. If the news pieces from 2001 didn't cement human trafficing via shipping container into our regional mythology, Raban's novel did.

So when 22 people spilled out of a container yesterday it was surprising, of course, but not something that we were completely unaware of by any means. A U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman says that the 18 men and 4 women made the trip in a container that was scheduled for inspection anyway (yeah, sure it was), but they were actually caught milling around the dock.

Currently the 22 container residents are at an immigration facility near Tukwila and, according to newspaper reports, will most likely be deported at some point.