The crew of the Bangun Perkasa has been moved from Alaska to Seattle, where they face deportation.
The 22-member crew is being held at a federal detention facility just outside Washington state's largest city while U.S. immigration authorities arrange to deport them to their native countries, the Associated Press reported Wednesday.
An immigration and customs agent told the AP that 10 crew members were from Vietnam; seven were from Indonesia, four came from China and one was from Taiwan, according to the Washington Post.
The Bangun Perkasa did not have a flag and was considered a "stateless vessel": crew members initially told the Coast Guard that they were an Indonesian fishing vessel but that country disputed the claim.
The boat was seized last month some 2,600 miles southwest of Kodiak Island in the Aleutian Islands, fishing illegally with a drift net. When the Coast Guard seized the vessel, officials found rats along with tons of illegally caught shark and squid on board.
Authorities escorted the ship to Unalaska. The whole affair briefly caught the nation's attention when U.S. Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, suggested that the "pirate fishing vessel" be towed out into the Bering Sea and blasted to smithereens as a target for Coast Guard gunships.
"It would send an unambiguous signal that pirate fishing is unacceptable to the United States and will not be tolerated," Begich said.