El Monte, California, United States
From the Los Angeles Times: "Most of them said they came from impoverished farming families and had headed to the metropolis of Bangkok to find sewing jobs. There, they met labor contractors who promised them good jobs in America and monthly pay of $1,000 – nearly 10 times what some were earning in Thailand. They were told they would work 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., with weekends off to see the glamorous sights of Los Angeles. But the reality was vastly different. Buppha Chaemchoi, 37, said she was shocked to arrive in El Monte and realize that she would sleep crammed in one bedroom on the floor with nine others. The windows had been boarded up, she said, allowing virtually no sunlight. Her captors told her that if she tried to escape, brutal U.S. police would shave her head and stamp her scalp with marks of disgrace, she said. “It made me worry and want to stay inside and just wait for my three-year contract to end,” Chaemchoi said. Chuai Ngan, 47, who came to the U.S. in 1993, said she also was intimidated with threats that her family would be harmed and their home in Thailand burned down if she attempted to leave. Not all captives were willing to accept their fate, however. Win Chuai Ngan, the 51-year-old husband of Sukanya, was the first to escape from El Monte. As one of the few male laborers, he said, he was allowed to go outside to take out the trash and help move sewing machines and other heavy supplies into the complex. One day, he said, he saw a Thai newspaper in the trash, surreptitiously tore out the phone number for a Thai temple and kept it hidden in his pocket. In November 1992, he made his move – jumping over the fence in the middle of the night. He ran to a taxi stand and asked to be taken to the temple. “I was so scared the owner would see me and kill me,” Win Chuai Ngan said. He said he told his story to Thai authorities and newspapers in Los Angeles, and gave them an address label for the El Monte complex that he had torn from the newspaper. But he said he did not report it to U.S. law enforcement officials because he was scared they would deport him. A few others also escaped, and community advocates eventually helped get the information to authorities. On Aug. 2, a multiagency task force led by the California Department of Industrial Relations raided the complex. Some of the women were cowed by their captors’ earlier descriptions of U.S. police and refused to open the door, which authorities hacked open with an ax. Others said they were overjoyed at their liberation. “I was so happy,” said Clinton, who had been held captive since April 1994. “I thought, ‘Oh my God, I’m going home!’ ” In the end, most of the workers decided to stay after Su and others successfully fought to win legal status for them. The workers annually celebrate Aug. 13 as their first full day of freedom, since that’s when all of them were allowed to leave immigration detention facilities. Clinton and the Chuai Ngans said that whatever travails they endured here, their American journeys have been well worth taking."