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Federal agents swooped in on three suspected sweatshops and arrested 55 people early Wednesday, including 39 Thai workers who authorities suspect were toiling to pay off travel debts to professional smugglers.
Investigators from the Immigration and Naturalization Service and Department of Labor acted jointly on one of many tips received by the INS since the highly publicized shutdown of a clandestine garment factory in El Monte on Aug. 2. Officials say more than 70 Thai workers toiled in slave-like conditions at that sweatshop.
No direct link between the El Monte operation and the three Los Angeles sites has emerged, officials said. They added that the merchandise, like that at the El Monte site, may have been destined for major retailers, including J.C. Penney.
"It looks like the authentic, expensive clothing you'd find at expensive stores," U.S. Department of Labor Investigator Francisco J. Ocampo said as he stood among the hundreds of blouses and jerseys produced on 24 sewing machines at one of the three factories. "These are not knockoffs."
Interviews of workers in the three facilities raided Wednesday produced evidence of "minimum wage, overtime, child labor and record-keeping violations," Ocampo said. "Pretty much everything there is under" federal law.
Unlike the El Monte factory, authorities said, the three shops raided Wednesday were not forced-labor operations. The workers-most of them illegal immigrants-were apparently free to come and go, although some may have lived at the sites, officials said.
Moreover, authorities said two of the three sites were state-licensed and the license of a third expired Aug. 16. The El Monte site was unlicensed.
But the INS believes that the Thai nationals at the three Los Angeles shops, like those in El Monte,...