INS Urged to Delay Return of Boy to Thailand

He is a tearful little boy brought halfway around the world on heavy sedation and a false passport. He spent a week in the hospital fighting a cold, an ear infection and chickenpox. He clings to his social worker and cries if she leaves the room.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service has already sent the man and woman posing as his parents back to Thailand. The agency had originally planned to repatriate Somsak Deema--who is either 2 or 3 years old--on Thursday.

But Thai community advocates, fearing that the boy is a pawn in an international ring smuggling Thai women into the United States for prostitution, are calling on the INS to delay Somsak’s return until they can be certain he is returning to a safe home. They suspect that he was being used to create the facade of a family on vacation.

The Thai community members say their fears are grounded in an ugly reality: International trafficking in human cargo is far from rare in the global economy.

“This is something that exists in our community and is a growing problem, not just something from the previous century,” said Hae Jung Cho, project coordinator for the Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking. “It is very profitable for people to import unpaid laborers from far away.”

Appeal to INS Chief

Chanchanit Martorell, executive director of the Thai Community Development Center, which has provided a home for the boy and a social worker as his guardian, said Thai advocates suspect that the child is being used “as a human prop by a criminal syndicate trying to traffic women from Thailand for the purpose of prostitution.”

“By no means are we trying to deprive a parent of custody of their child, but we want to make sure the boy is going to a real parent and a safe home,” she said.

Martorell has already appealed to INS Commissioner Doris Meissner to delay the repatriation.

Cho said she and other Thai advocates were told of the suspected smuggling ring by INS officials when the officials handed the boy over to the Thai social worker’s care April 25.

She said that she and Martorell met with INS District Director Thomas Schiltgen on Tuesday and that he promised to answer their appeal today. If he denies it, they plan to pursue other legal options, such as filing for asylum or alerting the county Department of Children and Family Services, Cho said.

After repeated requests for comment, INS spokesman Rico Cabrera in Los Angeles said late Tuesday: “No final decision has been made on whether to proceed with the child’s return” Thursday.

In light of the lengthy efforts undertaken by U.S. officials to ensure that the father of Cuban cause celebre Elian Gonzalez was a fit parent, Martorell asked, can’t officials take a few more days to make sure that Somsak is returning to his actual mother? “It’s like another Elian case, but there’s a double standard here,” Martorell said. “But in this case, there’s no interest in investigating the matter further of whether he is returning to a safe environment or even to the rightful parents.”

Leonard Kovensky, INS assistant district director in Los Angeles for detention and deportation, said officials are considering the request as they investigate the case.

Kovensky--who said he could not comment on concerns about a smuggling ring--said Somsak arrived at Los Angeles International Airport with fraudulent documents April 11 with a couple who told officials they were on a family vacation. The story quickly unraveled and officials sent the adults home and took custody of the boy, he said.

At this point, “the Thai Consulate has found the mother and she has identified the boy as her son,” Kovensky said. “We don’t have reason to doubt that identification.”

However, Piyawat Niyom-rerks, the Thai consul general, said he is “not 100%” certain that the woman who claims to be the boy’s mother is, in fact, his parent, “but we are giving her the benefit of the doubt.”

He said that he has alerted authorities in Thailand and that they will conduct an investigation to establish that the boy is going back to a true parent and a fit home.

“I cannot exercise my discretion here,” Niyom-rerks said. “The child is in the jurisdiction of the INS, and I have to respect the INS decision. The consulate has very limited authority to act otherwise.”

Possible Use as a ‘Mule’

Thai community advocates say the circumstances of the case make it crucial that Thai authorities conduct an exhaustive investigation before Somsak returns to Thailand.

In an April 27 letter to Schiltgen, the INS Los Angeles district director, Martorell said the man accompanying Somsak admitted that he planned to return to Thailand with the child and leave the woman in the United States.

She said INS officials said they believe the child was a “mule” for smugglers who had taken him on repeated trips from Thailand to the United States, always sedating him with sleeping pills.

“The man is believed to be involved with a criminal group that is trafficking women, one by one, into this country,” Martorell said in the letter. “It is further believed that the child was being used as a human prop in this criminal scheme to gain entry as a family.”

Martorell said that when pressed, the man gave U.S. officials the cellular phone number of a woman who claimed to be Somsak’s mother. The woman said she had sent the child with friends “to sightsee.” She sent the INS documents to prove the boy was her son, Martorell said.

However, the woman described a birthmark that the boy does not possess, Martorell said--raising questions over his true identity. In addition, the documents say the boy is well past his third birthday, while advocates judge him to be about 2 1/2.

“We feel that the identity of the boy needs to be firmly established, as well as the circumstances of this case, before he is transported across international borders,” Martorell wrote INS Commissioner Meissner on April 28.

Martorell is one of the Thai advocates who in 1995 helped assist some of the 72 Thai women held in slave-like conditions at an El Monte sweatshop, some for as long as seven years.

“When you hear the story about this little boy, it sounds so farfetched to use a child as a decoy,” Cho said. “The answer is so simple: It’s profit. The amount of money they can make in slave labor over several years is greater than selling weapons or drugs.”

At first, Somsak, who still uses diapers, was too upset to fall asleep at night, Cho said.

He would lie awake singing a little song in his northern Thai dialect, she said. But now, he loves cuddling with the social worker, and she has learned to sing his song to him as a lullaby.

“He could have been sold by his parents, or perhaps his mother is controlled by a criminal ring or renting him out,” Cho said. “The fact that someone would endanger a little boy with an earache by putting him on a plane just shows the lengths these people will go to. I’m sure there are many more cases like this, but we just don’t hear about them.”