INS Accused of Blocking Probe of Sweatshops : Labor: Agent says superiors canceled 1991 inquiry into shops that may have used forced help. INS says investigation by another agency found no wrongdoing.

The federal special agent who is now assisting in the prosecution of the operators of an El Monte sweatshop contends in papers filed with the government that in 1991 his supervisors prevented him from investigating sewing shops that may have been using forced Thai labor.

“Critical criminal investigations involving multiple homicides, Thai heroin trade, the large-scale smuggling of Asians and their peonage in Los Angeles and other investigative matters have been systemically obstructed by my management,” Agent Phillip L. Bonner wrote to Justice Department officials in Washington in August, 1993.

The allegations are part of a discrimination complaint against Bonner’s superiors in the Los Angeles office of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. The complaintis pending before the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which investigates discrimination allegations. Public outrage and finger-pointing, in Los Angeles and around the world, have spread since last week’s raid by a multi-agency law enforcement team on the El Monte garment factory. Agents who acted on a tip from a recent escapee found scores of undocumented Thai immigrants who allegedly had been held in virtual slavery in an apartment house in El Monte and made to toil for years.

The surfacing of the INS agent’s charges were the latest wrinkle in the widening scandal. In other developments Wednesday:

* Eighteen of the factory workers being detained as material witnesses made their first appearance in court, where public interest lawyers sought their immediate release from federal custody. As the perplexed workers quietly watched the proceedings, their new advocates sought to negotiate the amount of their bond. Thai civic and religious groups said they couldn’t afford to post bonds higher than $500 apiece for the detainees, who authorities say are all illegal immigrants. Siding with prosecutors, Magistrate Judge Virginia Phillips set the bond at $5,000 apiece. But prosecutors and community activists said later they would return to court today and ask that the bonds be reduced to $500.

* A coalition of community groups and public interest lawyers announced it is planning to file suit on behalf of the sweatshop workers, seeking $5 million in back pay, unspecified civil damages and redress for civil rights violations. The suit is expected to name not only the owners of the bootleg garment factory that allegedly exploited the workers, but every contractor and retailer who may have profited from their toil.

* The El Monte City Council, Thai community leaders and state Sen. Hilda L. Solis (D-El Monte) joined the expanding call for stiffer labor law enforcement and an investigation into what government agencies knew and when they knew it. Solis said her office “receives calls all the time” from both legal and undocumented workers who are exploited in the underground economy. And the council, in letters to President Clinton and U.S. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno, said residents were “extremely angry, bewildered, disappointed and discouraged” with the federal response to reports of the sweatshop’s existence.

The allegations by INS Agent Bonner, in documents obtained by The Times, provided yet another glimpse into the internal machinations that critics claim were responsible for delaying the law enforcement response to the conditions at the factory.

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In papers filed in connection with his complaint, Bonner alleged that his supervisor canceled an inquiry into an extensive garment-making operation allegedly run by a Los Angeles police officer and the officer’s family.

Agent Bonner, an eight-year veteran criminal investigator with the INS, could not be reached for comment about his complaint, which focuses on his service between 1990 and 1992. But his allegations are emerging publicly as the INS is reeling under criticism for closing its investigation of the El Monte sweatshop in 1992. The inquiry was ended after agents were unable to gather sufficient evidence to persuade federal prosecutors to apply for a search warrant of the premises. INS officials say the matter was referred to California labor officials, but state authorities say they have no record of such a referral.

Agent Bonner was not assigned to the initial INS investigation of the El Monte operation in 1992. However, he was among the agents who responded to the site last week and is currently a key investigator in the federal inquiry of the El Monte sweatshop. He is also author of the affidavit that accompanied the criminal complaint against the eight alleged operators of the sweatshop.

In his discrimination case, Bonner, who speaks and reads Thai, said he was obstructed by superiors in 1991 from investigating allegations that an LAPD officer and his family operated “at least five garment manufacturing sweatshops employing approximately 200 illegal Thai aliens--many of whom are smuggled into the U.S.” by the officer’s family “and held in indentured servitude.”

David L. Ross, Bonner’s attorney, said the INS “killed this investigation. . . . They stopped him from exposing slavery.”

Richard K. Rogers, INS district director in Los Angeles, said he believed the Office of Inspector General--a Justice Department oversight body--investigated Bonner’s allegations and found no wrongdoing. But Ross contended there had been no inspector general’s inquiry, though one was clearly merited.

The INS, Rogers added, thoroughly and promptly investigates all reports of peonage. “We pursue these cases immediately as soon as allegations of that type arise,” declared the agency’s Los Angeles chief.

Workers at the El Monte sweatshop have said they were recruited from the back country of Thailand with promises of a better life in the United States. Once here, however, they were forced to give up their passports and toil from early morning until midnight for less than $2 an hour in order to repay the sweatshop’s owners for their transportation costs. Some said they had been in the guarded complex in the 2000 block of Santa Anita Avenue for as long as seven years. They were barred from leaving, they said, even after their debts were repaid. Some said they were beaten if they tried to escape; others said they were told their families in Thailand would be harmed if they went to authorities here.

Nonetheless, several managed over the years to escape and contact authorities. But for a variety of reasons, neither building inspectors in El Monte, the El Monte police, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department nor the INS uncovered the sweatshop operation until last week’s raid.

That action resulted in the arrest of eight alleged sweatshop operators, six of whom have been charged in Federal District Court in Downtown Los Angeles with harboring illegal immigrants. The remaining two have been charged with transporting them.

The charges carry a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Additional charges, possibly including peonage, extortion, kidnaping, and selling into involuntary servitude, are also being considered against the defendants, who were ordered held without bail.

State officials also have said they are looking at clothing contractors and major retailers to find out where the sweatshop garments were sold. So far, two major retailers have been named by state officials. They have subpoenaed Mervyn’s and plan to subpoena Montgomery Ward early next week.

State Labor Commissioner Victoria Bradshaw said state and federal authorities are seeking additional information from the two companies because their addresses were discovered on shipping labels on boxes of garments found during the raid.

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The two firms say they have found no record of having received clothing from the sweatshop, which authorities said did business as SK Fashions. However, earlier this week, a Mervyn’s spokeswoman said buyers for the chain’s Southern California stores are calling nearly 1,000 vendors to ask if they may have subcontracted manufacturing jobs to the sweatshop.

On Wednesday, Montgomery Ward Executive Vice President Bob Connolly did likewise, asking all the store’s vendors to call Montgomery Ward’s lawyer immediately if they had done business with SK Fashions.

Apparel firms that bought merchandise from the operation, an unregistered garment contractor, could be held legally liable for wage violations and would have to help cover the cost of more than $3.5 million in back pay due the workers, Bradshaw said.

Also interested in tracing the path of the sweatshop garments from the Thai workers to the commercial market were lawyers for Sweatshop Watch, a coalition of labor leaders, community groups and legal advocates that has formed in the wake of the El Monte raid.

Julie A. Su, an attorney with the Asian Pacific American Legal Center, said the center has assembled a team of labor and immigration experts and is drafting the civil suit in the workers’ behalf that will name every merchant who profited from their alleged exploitation.

Chanchanit Hirunpidok, executive director of the Los Angeles Thai Community Development Center--another member of the coalition--condemned the detention of the more than 70 workers. The workers, she charged, had been “doubly victimized”--first by the sweatshop owners, and then by the INS, which has held them for the past week in federal prisons Downtown and on Terminal Island.

Hirunpidok’s group and other social service and religious groups had promised to post reasonable bail for the workers and be responsible for ensuring that they stay to testify in the case. In return, they asked that the government allow the laborers to go free.

Under the provisions of the agreement, the workers would not be prosecuted for entering the United States illegally in exchange for their testimony in the case.

Times staff writers Paul Feldman, Patrick J. McDonnell and Margaret Ramirez contributed to this story.