DANGEROUS TIDES

By CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY

LAS LISAS IS A DINKY, DROWSY TOWN IN the Dominican Republic, much like others that dot the small Caribbean country's northern coast. Chickens run in the one paved street; pigs root near the pink and green huts. At a roadside stand, a caldron of soup sits outside the door. A few men while away the afternoon hours playing dominoes in the shade of a nut tree.

But nothing in this Potemkin village is as it seems. Las Lisas traffics not in local cuisine or local color but in a dream--the dream of traveling to America. The food hut is actually a check-in station for refugees and their machete-strapped buscones (guides). The men under the nut tree are lookouts, who meet groups of would-be immigrants arriving from Santo Domingo and direct them to hiding places in safe houses and the surrounding jungle. Makeshift boats--weighted down by rocks and submerged in the stream near town--are waiting to take the travelers to the U.S. commonwealth of Puerto Rico, where they can easily board a flight to New York City. Even the chickens have a role in this secret commerce: three times a day a boy delivers slaughtered birds and boxes of white rice to the refugees, who may wait days or weeks for their boat to leave. For a few pesos extra, he will bring a bottle of Brugal, the local rum, to kill the boredom and dull any fears about the dangers that lie ahead. "The town depends on the trips," says an older resident. "When the weather is bad or the police ask for more money and the trips slow down, it becomes like a graveyard."

Increasingly, when people want to go to America--illegally, that is--the Dominican Republic is where they go first. There are dozens of coastal towns just like Las Lisas where the chief industry--sometimes the sole industry--is illegal immigration. It is impossible to say exactly how many thousands of people arrive in the U.S. through the Dominican Republic each year, because official surveillance and interdiction are so spotty. The U.S. Border Patrol and other law-enforcement agencies made 4,364 arrests in the area last year, but that figure bears little relation to the number of people flooding out.

What is clear is that the illegal traffic is growing, and it is international, with refugees arriving on this remote stretch of beach from Latin America, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, even China and Japan. One telltale sign of the booming refugee trade: the Dominican Republic has become the largest importer of outboard engines in Latin America. Says a U.S. official: "There are boats every day taking people from all over the world into the U.S. through here."

Now that beefed-up law enforcement has made it harder for illegal immigrants to cross the U.S.-Mexican border, the flow has shifted to this point of less resistance. The Dominican Republic's seven busy international airports and minimal visa restrictions make it difficult to monitor the comings and goings of foreigners. And once refugees weather the 110-mile boat trip from the northern coast of the Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico, they can usually slip onto a U.S.-bound flight without a document check.

Despite the mounting popularity of this route, the trip is generally perilous and expensive. A Central American pays upwards of $4,000; someone leaving from China pays $35,000 for the journey. After the immigrant arrives on the Dominican coast, there are two classes of transport. Once a week, the Mafia sponsors a crossing on a sleek Boston Whaler that for $900 will deliver a well-heeled traveler with "impediments to immigration," such as passport problems or outstanding warrants, to a yacht waiting off the shores of Puerto Rico.

For everyone else, the voyage is a brutal, shoddy affair organized by small-time thugs, condoned by corrupt, bribe-taking public officials, and implemented by 100 or so boat captains who live along the Dominican coast. Trip organizers often run a series of scams on their desperate and vulnerable customers. Sometimes passengers are not permitted to bring food on board for the two-day trip; once the voyage is under way, provisions are sold to them at exorbitant prices. And it's not uncommon for the organizers to rob passengers before allowing them to disembark. One of the cruelest and most common ruses is for a captain to take his customers on a circuitous voyage, stop on a deserted Dominican beach and tell the disoriented, usually seasick passengers that they have arrived in the U.S. Three weeks ago, 50 passengers came to Las Lisas for a prepaid trip, but the organizer and his boat failed to materialize. Said a furious refugee: "I will find him and kill him with my bare hands." A Colombian woman declared stoically, "I will find another boat." She had already been robbed and raped in her three-month quest to reach America, and she wasn't going to be discouraged by a mere con man.

But the greatest peril on these trips is posed not by man but by nature. The Mona straits, which separate the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, are among the most difficult waters in the world for small boats to navigate. To avoid detection, the poorly made yolas usually set a course through the desecheo (detour), a treacherous stretch of sea avoided by legitimate traffic. Experts estimate that, all told, 10% to 20% of refugee boats capsize. A videotape taken several years ago by a Puerto Rican customs official shows some 50 refugees, their boat overturned, being devoured by frenzied sharks.

There have been few serious efforts to clean up or stamp out the immigrant trade; it is simply too vital to the Dominican Republic's economy. Eugenio Cabral, executive director of civil defense for the Dominican Republic, claims to have attempted a crackdown. Three of his men infiltrated organizations running the trips-and all three were killed. When Cabral sent reports to the Dominican navy about upcoming voyages, no action was taken. Instead assassins tried three times to kill him. He has since given up. "In the provinces, everyone has a hand in the business,'' he says. "Senators and Deputies profit directly. There is little that can be done."

BUSINESS IS BOOMING. TURIN, A TRIP organizer from the small Dominican town of Miches, runs three trips every month. With each boat carrying 100 refugees, he grosses about $150,000 a year. If a boat capsizes or is captured, he gets another one and schedules an extra trip to recoup his costs. Says Turin: "There are always people willing to go." Recently, as darkness fell on Miches, Turin and his assistants and bodyguards whisked through the town, picking up passengers from safe houses and taking them to a gathering point on the beach. He was expecting a new batch of Italian immigrants, but they never appeared. A group of Koreans arrived but decided to take a different boat.

So on this trip there are mainly Dominicans, but also Ecuadorans, Haitians and a Cuban. Manuel Diaz, a Colombian traveling with his wife, paid $8,000 for the trip. "I have a job waiting for me at a grocery store on Northern Boulevard, Queens," he says proudly. Mar'a Rodriguez, a Cuban, says she simply could not earn enough in her native land. "Look at my hands," she says, showing fingers and palms callused from years of manual labor. "I am still young. But there is no way to survive where I come from. I left my children with relatives, and I came. There was no other choice."

Midnight. A 40-ft. boat pulls up, and an anguished murmur goes out from the 200 refugees on shore-the craft is too small. The buscones begin yelling and waving their machetes. Over two grueling hours, they crowd 111 people aboard the vessel; each passenger's legs spread to accommodate the person in front of him. When the voyage finally starts, there is no room to move. The ship is leaky and reeks of gasoline. Passengers vomit. Others sleep. By the time the sun rises, everybody is stiff and tense.

At 10 a.m. a U.S. Coast Guard plane appears. Hoping not to be seen, passengers huddle on the floor of the boat, which is slimy with vomit and seawater. The boat heads to the desecheo to shake its pursuers. No luck. At noon another small plane with American markings breaks through the haze along the horizon.

It's over. Soon they will all be picked up by the U.S. Coast Guard, returned to the Dominican Republic and fined $2 each. There will be no New York, no new life and no refund. The boat captains change clothes and seat themselves among the passengers to avoid detection. One female passenger starts to cry. Her trip is a waste, her future uncertain. But one boat captain is defiant. "We will go again next week," he vows. "They cannot stop us."

--Reported by Edward Barnes/Miches

With reporting by EDWARD BARNES/MICHES