The Slave Shop and the INS’ Indifference : What did the agency know and when did they know it in the El Monte garment workers case?

U.S. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno must order an immediate investigation into the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s cover-up of its three-year complicity in the enslavement of Thai nationals in the El Monte garment factory raided by agents of the state Labor Commissioner last week.

INS spokesperson Virginia Kice acknowledged last week that the INS had gotten a tip on the enslavement of the garment workers three years ago. “We attempted to follow up,” she said. “But we were never able to secure enough information to go forward with the investigation.” That is simply untrue.

The U.S. attorney in Los Angeles and the local INS office have in their possession an affidavit written by an INS agent in the spring of 1992 documenting the prison-like conditions in El Monte and requesting a search of the complex because “the premises are believed to contain persons held in conditions of involuntary servitude.”

But despite that alarming report, the barbed-wire-ringed complex was never searched, and instead the case was mysteriously closed in July of 1992. In addition, on May 24, 1995, INS officials interviewed an escapee of the slave shop and her attorney and still did not move to close down the facility.

This tale of cruel federal indifference begins in March, 1992, when, according to the affidavit, the INS received a report from a Thai-speaking police officer at the LAPD’s Hollywood division that “40 females and five males . . . are being detained, controlled, and held against their will in a condition of involuntary servitude. Unknown persons have seized the passports of the 45 detainees and are subjecting these detainees to a forced working schedule of 18 hours a day, seven days a week, for a salary of $200 a month manufacturing garments.”

The affidavit states that beginning on April 2, 1992, the INS put the complex under external surveillance. The agents searched the garbage, checked utilities bills, used telescopes to peer into open doors and as a result were able to provide a solid basis for a search of the premises.

Garments were being manufactured in dwellings not designated for that purpose and the workers were confined to the building. The only movement in and out were vans bringing in raw materials and leaving with finished garments. The affidavit recorded numerous sightings of Asian females illegally working at “industrial-type sewing machines,” around-the-clock.

The agent who wrote the affidavit summarized what he expected to find once granted the search warrants and permitted to enter the premises:

“Based on my experience, I expect to find the following at 2614 Santa Anita Ave: approximately 45 aliens not lawfully present in the United States, one or more persons holding these natives of Thailand, records of time pay and production, passports relating to the 45 Thai natives and other aliens, and receipts, invoices, or other evidence of purchase or sale of . . . garments.”

Why then were the premises never searched until last week when the state freed 74 Thai workers? Did INS officials reject the agents’ request for search warrants? Why were other federal and state agencies not alerted to possible violations of the law? We are left to wonder whether the INS has concealed knowledge of additional slave shops in Los Angeles.

California officials had never been informed of the results of the earlier surveillance or the affidavit requesting search warrants. State officials only became aware of the El Monte prison factory when they received a tip of their own last May.

Based on their own surveillance, California Labor Department officials obtained a search warrant from a state court. It was only when state officials requested INS backup for the raid that they learned of the earlier history of federal surveillance and the affidavit.

The affidavit is a smoking gun. What it demonstrates is that federal officers knew three years ago that people were being held against their will in subhuman conditions, that numerous federal and state laws were being violated and yet instead of freeing them in July, 1992, the government closed the case and left those poor souls to their misery.

The failure to act on the affidavit rests with the INS and the U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno should order an immediate investigation of this sorry escapade. But more is needed. Just why federal agencies permitted slavery to continue in Los Angeles for three years after first documenting its existence must be the subject of a full scale investigation by the White House and Congress.