Asian Leaders Call for Release of Thai Workers

Asian American community leaders expressed outrage Wednesday over the continued incarceration of Thai workers who were rescued from conditions of slavery in an El Monte sweatshop last week, only to be locked up in a federal prison as material witnesses pending immigration hearings and possible deportation.

The more than 70 undocumented Thai workers held in detention at the federal facility on Terminal Island are “confused and distraught about their situation,” said Chanchancit (Chancee) Martorell, an activist with the group Thai Community Development. “Having gone from one prison to another, these workers have been doubly victimized.”

Martorell’s group and a statewide coalition of community and labor organizations called for the immediate release of the detainees at a news conference in El Monte Wednesday. Martorell vowed that the coalition, calling itself “Sweatshop Watch,” will “lead the community fight for the rights of the El Monte Thai workers to legal redress and back wages.”

Legal advocates say they plan to sue for as much as $5 million in back pay and compensation for civil rights damages on behalf of the workers. So far, however, only eight of the detainees have retained the legal services offered by the coalition, according to Immigration and Naturalization Service spokesman Ron Rogers.

In contrast to the deplorable conditions of the El Monte sweatshop, Rogers said, the workers are being housed in a “fully accredited detention center, one of the finest of its kind in the nation. They’re getting three hot meals and a bed, and medical treatment is available.”

According to Martorell and others, Thai Consul General Suphot Dhirakaosal and other consular officials have been advising the detainees to waive their rights to deportation hearings and return quietly to Thailand to avoid the shame of publicity.

“The consulate, the Thai government has no interest in helping these people. All they care about is saving their face,” complained one of the Thai interpreters volunteering to assist with INS interviews. “The consulate is telling them: ‘You’re costing the U.S. government money. It’s embarrassing. You should go back.’ ”

Dhirakaosal, the consul general, did not return repeated phone calls on Tuesday and Wednesday.

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Rogers said deportation hearings for the 67 women and five men are being postponed until investigators can interview them as material witnesses. He confirmed reports from interpreters and Thai community members that the detainees are being transported in shackles back and forth from Terminal Island to a Downtown detention center for interviews.

“It’s just ridiculous to take them out of one kind of imprisonment and then imprison them again,” said Julie Su, an attorney with the Asian American Legal Center, which is leading the group of volunteer lawyers. “It sends the wrong message, that if you’re exploited and you assert your rights, we’ll lock you up.”

Meanwhile, intervention has been difficult, Martorell said.

Most of the detainees come from an area of Thailand near the Laotian border, and were suspicious of volunteers from the local Thai community who were mostly from other areas of the country. But workers began to open up this week once a Laotian volunteer offered to help, she added.

The workers are also worried about retribution against themselves and their families back home if they cooperate in the prosecution of the people accused of enslaving them.

“Material witnesses are concerned that they will not be protected” if released from custody, Martorell said. “They want to be released, but they are afraid.”

News of the sweatshop slavery investigation triggered an outpouring of compassion as well as outrage from the local community. So much support has been offered to the workers that Martorell’s group has set up a fund to handle donations of food, clothing, toiletries and money.

Los Angeles County is home to the largest population of ethnic Thai people outside of Asia, estimated by the 1990 U.S. Census at 19,016. Martorell estimates the total is as high as 33,000 if undocumented immigrants are included.

“Since the 1980s we’ve seen a critical mass of immigrants from poor rural villages in Thailand, coming here on false documents or overstaying their tourist visas,” she said. “A lot of women have been recruited and smuggled in.”

Thailand is populated by a variety of people, mostly ethnic Thai but also Laotian, Cambodian and a large number of ethnic Chinese who have mixed through intermarriage and assimilated into Thai society. In Los Angeles, Thai nationals tend to blend in with the larger population of Chinese in the San Gabriel Valley, but scattered concentrations of Thais are marked by restaurants in the Hollywood and Mid-Wilshire areas.

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The Wat Thai Buddhist monastery in North Hollywood has been a focal point for the community, and the Thai detainees reportedly broke down in tears when monks from the temple visited them at the Downtown detention facility on Tuesday.

Indeed, community sources say the unidentified woman who escaped from the El Monte sweatshop three years ago--and triggered the first aborted investigation--initially sought sanctuary at the temple before reporting the labor abuses to an immigration attorney. She is now legally settled in the United States and the working mother of a newborn child.

Thra Sumana, one of 20 monks at Wat Thai, said he had no knowledge of the escaped worker seeking sanctuary at the temple. But he said community leaders, many of whom are worshipers, have gathered there frequently since the sweatshop was raided last week.

“Everybody is shocked,” he said. “It’s a real tragedy. Nobody would have expected this to happen.”