Boy in Smuggling Case Is Given Visa

WASHINGTON -- With the personal blessing of Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft, the Justice Department has decided to grant semi-permanent immigration status to a 4-year-old Thai boy who has become an international poster child for the ills of trafficking in humans, officials said.

The decision helps a Los Angeles couple who are acting as Phanupong Khaisri’s guardians in their fight to keep him in the United States. The boy’s grandparents seek his return to Thailand.

Lawyers for the INS are expected to convey their decision today to attorneys involved in the two-year battle over the future of the boy, who is known as Got, according to a senior Justice Department official who asked not to be identified.

“We will grant him a ‘T’ visa. He is a victim of a severe form of trafficking,” the official said. “It will be finalized in a matter of weeks.”

Congress created the T visas in 2000 as a special immigration status allowing victims of human trafficking to stay in the United States if they can persuade immigration officials that they would face “extreme hardship” if returned to their native countries. Got will be one of the first people granted that special status, the official said.

Got arrived at Los Angeles International Airport in 2000, accompanied by two adults who authorities say were using him as a decoy to smuggle a female prostitute into the country. The adults were expelled to Thailand, but the discussion about what to do with the boy set off an international debate that some have likened to the case of Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez.

The boy’s father, mentally ill since childhood, killed himself not long after Got was born, and his mother, who has worked at a bar in Bangkok, was a drug addict. The boy’s case became even more tragic when it was learned that he was HIV-positive.

The boy’s grandparents in Thailand have been trying to have him returned there to their custody. But in the meantime, he has been living with a Silver Lake couple who have been made his court-appointed guardians and have been trying to adopt him.

The couple, Evan Smyth and Janet Herold, and their attorney said Sunday that they were unaware of any pending decision, though hopeful that it would occur.

“It’s a total surprise to us,” said Smyth, who has had joint custody of the child since he was released to the couple about 14 months ago.

“It would be a better status than he has now,” said Herold, who added that the next step will be to apply for permanent residency.

The T visa can be revoked by the INS should the agency decide that he no longer faces danger if deported to Thailand, where human-rights attorneys have argued that he would be subject to punishment by traffickers and neglect by the health-care system, said Peter Schey, president of the Los Angeles-based Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, and lead counsel in the case.

“It would probably be hard to find a more qualified applicant,” Schey said of Got. “He would have faced a wide range of threats to his life, discrimination and persecution had he been returned to Thailand,” even in the custody of his grandparents, Schey said.

Neither the boy’s grandparents nor their attorney in the United States could be reached for comment.

The INS initially denied the boy political asylum and tried to deport him to Thailand. But the court blocked his deportation, and Ashcroft, who has made combating human trafficking a top priority in the Justice Department, intervened last July to override that INS decision, granting the Thai boy temporary residence status on humanitarian grounds.

He also ordered the INS to consider whether to give the boy the newly created T visa.

U.S. immigration officials are scheduled to meet today in Los Angeles for a settlement conference with lawyers involved in the case, and the federal officials are expected to relay their decision to grant the visa.

The decision to make Got one of the first T visa recipients gives him an added measure of protection under U.S. immigration law, and it clears the way for the possibility of permanent residency in three years, federal officials said.