Of Neighbors and Fences : ‘Slave’ Shop Generated Few Suspicions

El Monte is a city of fences.

Spike-topped wrought-iron bars surround homes, condominium complexes and even the most ramshackle apartments. Chain-link fences can stretch six feet high around homes in residential neighborhoods, and barbed wire is a common sight on many commercial business in this town with active gangs and a small police force.

Thus the fence that authorities say kept in more than 60 Thai immigrants toiling in near-slavery conditions for years in an outlaw garment factory attracted little attention from neighbors, city officials or authorities until the early-morning raid Wednesday.

Neighbors say they never heard sounds of distress or noise from sewing machines. They rarely saw anyone strolling within the well-kept seven-unit apartment complex on Santa Anita Avenue.

“I feel so bad,” said Lilia Whitehead, 67, a 25-year El Monte resident whose house sits directly across the street from the alleged sweatshop. “From here, I never saw that barbed wire. You can’t see that wire from this side.”

Many wondered, as the tale unfolded this week, how an operation alleged to have gone on for so long could have avoided attention. Authorities said Thai immigrants were lured to the United States with promises of higher wages, only to be kept virtual prisoners, threatened and forced to work 12-hour days at $2 an hour to pay off their transportation costs.

“I think we were all appalled,” El Monte Vice Mayor Maria Avila said. “But a lot of the people weren’t aware of what was going on. When you look at it, it looks like a condominium.”

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The complex sits on a wide, busy street in El Monte, where a nearby apartment complex has the same type of wire fence with an electronic gate. Most of the barbed wire is in the back of the complex and can’t be seen from the street.

The complex, which is owned by Jose and Margarita Reynoso, was built eight years ago after a house on the site was razed and the modern-looking apartment building erected, said Chuck Lieder, 58, manager of a mobile home park next to the apartment complex.

Reynoso, who lives less than a mile from the complex in South El Monte, said he had no idea that his tenants might be operating a garment factory. He added that he was approached in 1991 by two men, whom he called Danny and Nicky, who wanted to rent the entire complex for what they said were “family members” coming from another country.

They paid $950 a month in cash for each of the six 3-bedroom units, Reynoso said. Reynoso added that the rent from the apartments is his major source of income. “I couldn’t even sleep the last few nights thinking about how I’m going to pay my bills,” he said. “I was just basically making it.”

Lieder said the mobile home tenants for years thought that something was not quite right at the complex next door but that they had no real reason to summon police.

Lieder, whose trailer sits at the end of the mobile home park and has a good view of the complex, said he never saw more than three or four women next door at a given time. The women never spoke to their neighbors, he said.

Reynoso said he agreed to install iron bars with inward-leaning spikes after tenants complained that thieves were stealing tools from their parked cars inside the complex. Reynoso also noted that someone was shot to death on the property earlier this year but that sheriff’s homicide detectives found no sign of a garment factory when they investigated the death.

The garage doors, behind which authorities said the women sat for hours sewing, were rarely raised more than a foot, Lieder said. A small group of women would sometimes eat lunch in a grassy area at the back of the complex, and cooked food was brought in pans and placed on the concrete driveway, he said.

Large white trucks would rumble into the complex at 5:30 a.m. and then return at night about 7:30 or 8 p.m. On these occasions, the garage doors would be completely opened, but Lieder said he could not see inside because the entryway would be stacked with piles of clothes.

He and other neighbors had speculated that the women were working in a laundry. They assumed that the men who took turns sitting in the complex driveway were supervisors. Authorities have said the men were 24-hour guards to keep the women inside.

“If the city didn’t do anything, then it must be all right to do what they’re doing,” Lieder said he reasoned at the time.

Emma Ansman, 83, a four-year trailer park resident, said she sometimes saw two women pushing the large garbage bins to the sidewalk for collection and then racing back inside. The women would retrieve them in the same hurried manner, which she attributed at the time to the women’s just wanting to have a bit of fun.

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Marcela Orozco, 36, whose house sits behind the complex, said adjacent neighbors, with their barking dogs and gardening, made much more noise than anyone at the apartment complex.

Whitehead said her husband, George, finally decided to call the Immigration and Naturalization Service on suspicion that the women inside the complex were illegal immigrants. But the INS phone lines were always busy or went unanswered, so he gave up, she said.