Agencies Hide Chinese Youths From Smugglers : Immigration: Social service groups whisk away 39 unclaimed teen-agers to foster homes around the country.

Two East Coast social service agencies are spiriting away 39 smuggled teen-age immigrants from China who remained unclaimed in Los Angeles County detention centers and are clandestinely placing them in foster homes across the country.

The organizations, which have resettled thousands of minors from Haiti and elsewhere in the past, face an unprecedented challenge this time: keeping the youngsters safe from the smugglers who arranged their journeys from China’s Fujian province and who might be after them to pay their smuggling debts.

As a result, the agencies are keeping the youths’ destinations secret, giving police and the FBI advance notice of their placement and warning the youngsters about making phone calls and taking any other steps that could put them in danger.

“All contacts with the kids are being routed through the (social service) agencies, not the foster homes,” said Kenneth John Elwood, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service’s assistant district director for detention and deportation in Los Angeles. “Frankly, I don’t want anyone knowing when these kids are being moved.”

The INS has released most of the 160 arrested Chinese youths on bail over the last few months to people who say they are relatives or who present written authorization from the youngsters’ relatives, but community activists and INS officials suspect that some have nonetheless ended up in the hands of smugglers. Most of the youngsters have applied for asylum and their cases are still winding through immigration court, although the initial rulings have been unfavorable to the youngsters.

No one had come forward to claim the 39 teen-agers who remained in custody, Elwood said. The U.S. Catholic Conference and the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service began negotiations in August with the Justice Department’s Community Relations Service to place the youths in foster care.

The organizations have placed 30 youths with families in the West and Midwest over the last two weeks. Nine more await placement, according to social workers.

“We are working very hard to make sure they are kept safely,” Elwood said of the youths.

On Oct. 14, the Lutheran agency placed 20 youths in three communities in the West and Midwest, checking with local police and the FBI first to ensure that the cities were free of Asian organized crime, social workers with the organization said.

“All the kids have been told that if they have concerns about their safety, that we would encourage them to use a central mailing address, and that any phone calls to relatives . . . might in fact be traced,” said Julie Macdonald, children’s services program director with the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service.

Her agency has also contacted local police departments and school district officials to prepare them for potential problems, she added.

“We’ve been fortunate enough to place them all within a few miles of each other,” said a social worker in one Western city where nine youths are now living with five foster families.

The families each have at least one parent who speaks Mandarin, though most are from Vietnam and Cambodia, he said, and will attend a bilingual program at the local high school.

The youngsters were among more than 160 children--ranging in age from 9 to 17--who were arrested by the INS after they had been smuggled by ship to shores from Baja California to the Bay Area in late May and early June.

Volunteer lawyers in the youths’ new communities will review their cases, said the social worker, who asked not to be identified in order to keep the youths’ location secret. Social workers complain that the youngsters’ asylum hearings were rushed through the immigration court at such a fast pace that the hearings went against the youths. Most are appealing, although some already have had deportation orders issued against them.

“It’s ludicrous to expect some teen-ager in lockup to find their own attorney. In my opinion, they really did not get adequate opportunity to retain counsel,” the social worker said of the youths. “In one case, a boy was given five different opportunities by the court to find counsel. He wasn’t able to. What’s he going to do, look in the Yellow Pages or something?”

“It’s so different from the Haitian kids we resettled,” Macdonald said. “A lot of them are still waiting for their first hearing on their asylum cases.”

INS spokesman Verne Jervis said all the youths have an opportunity to appeal their cases, and added that no Chinese who have arrived on U.S. shores on smuggling ships have been sent back to China.

The U.S. Catholic Conference has placed 10 youths in one Northwest community, six of whom left Los Angeles on Friday, said Mark Franken, director for refugee operations. His agency will place nine more in homes as soon as the Community Relations Service approves them, he said.

One 17-year-old boy recently begged Lutheran social workers to prevent his release to a man who claimed to be responsible for him, Macdonald said.

Her organization alerted several INS officials in Los Angeles about his concerns, but when they received a final list of youths still in custody, the teen-ager was not on it, she said.

The Lutheran agency has complained about the boy’s case to the INS in Washington, Macdonald said.