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MORE NEWS ON PLANNED DEPORTATION OF THAI CHILD
Plans for the government of Thailand to take custody of a small child who was used as a prop in an attempt to enter the US with fraudulent documents have been put on hold. A federal judge has ordered that the INS must wait at least two weeks before returning the boy to Thailand. 
The judge made the ruling to allow the boy’s grandparents to come to the US from Thailand to take custody of the child here.  Before the decision, officials planned for the boy to stay in an orphanage until the adoption occurred.  The judge also ordered the INS to pay for the child’s medical care.  Since arriving he has had to have surgery for an ear infection and has contracted chicken pox.  
The child was to have been repatriated some time ago, but the Thai community in Los Angeles, where the boy entered the US, expressed concern that he would again be exploited.  Since then, according to spokespeople from the Thai government, the boy’s 22-year-old mother has given up custody of him.  However, the grandparents want to adopt him are financially well off.  
The boy, who has been identified as Phanupong Khaisri, entered the US on April 11 with a man and woman who claimed to be his parents.  Immigration inspectors discovered the Singaporean passports they presented were fakes, and moreover than neither one of them had any relation to the child.  They determined that the child was being used as part of an attempt to enter as tourists. 
The Thai community says they do not want the child to remain in the US, but that they want to be sure when he is returned, it is to a “safe environment.”  The community had also expressed concern that the boy was being used as part of a scheme to smuggle Southeast Asian women into the US.  These fears were realized when police officials announced that the child had in fact been used at least twice before in similar schemes. 
According to the boy's maternal grandmother, he had been raised by his maternal grandfather after his father committed suicide.  She said that two months ago her daughter came to get the boy.  She further said that her daughter told her “that she would give him away to be an adopted child of her friend in exchange for 10,000 Baht (5).”  The mother denies selling or loaning her son to anyone.  She has told authorities that she had asked a friend to look after him and did not know he had been taken to the US.