CFB ESQUIMALT - A long journey has come to an end.
As first light broke over the pacific coast, the overloaded MV Sun Sea had been escorted by Canadian authorities into CFB Esquimalt, finally set to unload her human cargo: 490 Tamil migrants seeking asylum.
The vessel had been tracked for months intercepted by the navy boarded by the RCMP.
They found women and children, elderly people too.
They'd been living on this 59-meter boat for three months amidst filth and garbage.
This afternoon, the first of the migrants were already being moved to Wilkinson Road Jail in Saanich.
How long they are detained here and at other regional jails on the Lower Mainland will be decided against the backdrop of the Harper government's new 'get tough' rules against illegal immigration and human smuggling.
But from Canada's large Tamil community there is strong pushback on how the migrants should be viewed and treated after leaving a homeland torn apart by civil war.
If there is evidence human smugglers brought the migrants to Canada for money, Public Safety Minister Vic Toews promises they will be prosecuted.
It's been tried once before.
A decade ago, nine Korean nationals were charged with smuggling 131 Chinese migrants into Canada.
They went to trial and were acquitted.