For this Prodigal Son, Homecoming Is a Work in Progress

Pornchai Moontri’s return to Thailand after 36 years has been that of a Prodigal Son traversing some dark rivers of the heart, but with help from an unexpected navigator.

September 7, 2022 by Fr. Gordon MacRae

“Sawasdee Kup, my friends. This is Pornchai writing from Bangkok, Thailand. I am very happy to see this post by Father G about my other spiritual father and patron saint, Maximilian Kolbe. He has been so much a part of my life in too many ways for me to describe. I think Father G summed it up well when he introduced this post today on Linkedin and Facebook. Here is how he described it:

"#Resistance This post reveals a little known mystical connection between St. Maximilian Kolbe and St. Pope John Paul II. Resistance to evil is never futile."

My birthday is coming up. (That is not a hint!) Some of my friends got me my first computer as an early birthday present. Remember that I was "down" for the entire computer age. So this is like an alien device to me. Yesterday I saw Beyond These Stone Walls here in Thailand on a full size computer screen for the very first time. It is awesome! And so are all of you.

With love and my prayers,

Pornchai Maximilian Moontri”

After I posted “A Tale of Two Priests: Maximilian Kolbe and John Paul II” a few weeks ago, the comment above was posted by our friend Pornchai Moontri writing from Bangkok, Thailand. A few readers subsequently sent messages asking for an update about Pornchai and his life there. I had already intended to write about this because his birthday is September 10, just a few days after this is posted. Pornchail will be 49 years old and is still struggling to regain the sense of home that was lost when he left Thailand 37 years ago in 1985.

This post will be followed in a week by one that has been a long time coming. I have been working on it for months, and I believe it is the most important post I have ever written. There are some who do not want me to write it, but, for reasons that may seem apparent here next week, I must. It is an Earth-shattering account for which Satan himself has lodged many obstacles in the path of its telling. They have mostly been overcome. I ask for your prayers as I complete that most important post this week.

By coincidence, I learned only after beginning today’s post that the Gospel for the Sunday Mass following its publication is the Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32). The word, “Prodigal” does not mean what some readers think it means. Its origin is in the Middle English “prodigalite” which comes from the Latin, “prodigere,” the original meaning of which is to drive away or squander. From the famous parable that Jesus told, it has also come to mean “reckless” or “wasteful,” neither of which I could ascribe to my own Prodigal Son, Pornchai Moontri.

But there was time in Pornchai’s life — a long time — when he felt compelled to drive away anyone and everyone who cared enough to enter it. This is the plight of so many who have been spiritually and emotionally wounded from a traumatic past. Pornchai tried to drive me away, too, but God had other plans and we both ended up following them. That story was told in this very same week one year ago, so I invite you to revisit it. If next week’s post is my most important, this one remains my own favorite. It is “The Parable of a Priest and the Parable of a Prisoner.”

Mary Calls in Reinforcements

I do not know whether I have the writing skills to adequately convey what Pornchai has been up against over the last 18 months. I have known and helped other prisoners who have faced deportation as adults to a home and country they had not seen since early childhood. Many simply do not survive. I had long been determined that Pornchai would not be one of those. Over time, by some mysterious grace, my writing made its way around the Globe to Thailand where people noticed and some support developed to assist Pornchai’s plight. He had no contact for 36 years with any of the extended family left behind when he was taken away at age eleven. He had only vague memories.

While he was still trapped in that grueling five months of post-prison ICE detention, my heart sank when I learned that the housing and support plan we had for him just fell apart in the eleventh hour due to illness. It was just weeks before Pornchai was to board a flight and I had no backup plan. Trying to put such things together from inside a prison cell half a world away is a daunting challenge.

I kept no secrets from Pornchai in this regard so I painfully remember hearing his own heart sink at the other end of the phone when I told him that the plan we had in place for him fell apart.

I remember trying to put the best spin I could on it. I asked him to trust. I said that often in my experience, such disappointments can become opportunities. Did I really believe that? I’m not sure, but I was sure of one thing: Pornchai would not believe it unless I did. So I did! In prayer, I turned this over to Mary, Undoer of Knots, my favorite from of Marian devotion and the most powerful. I asked her in an act of surrender to undo the knots of faithless distrust that held us bound.

Just two days later, in our daily ten-minute phone call while Pornchai was stranded in ICE waiting out a pandemic, I told him we had better news. I told him that Fr. John Hung Le, a Society of the Divine Word missionary priest from Vietnam, had been reading about us on Beyond These Stone Walls and sent me a message that he wants to help and would provide housing for Pornchai until we could find a better plan. Pornchai was dubious. “I don’t want to be a burden for anyone,” he said.

After Pornchai’s initial stay in required pandemic quarantine at a Bangkok hotel in February, 2021, Father John showed up with our Divine Mercy Thailand friend, Yela, and with Chalathip, Father John’s neighbor and a benefactor of his refugee project. Chalathip learned about Pornchai’s life from Yela and Fr. John, and she received an interior summons from Mary herself.

A retired teacher, Chalathip took on the task of helping Pornchai to assimilate in Thailand, a most difficult task after an absence consisting of his entire adult life since age eleven. Pornchai had to be tutored in conversational Thai, and quickly, but Chalathip knew this could not happen while Pornchai was living with four Vietnamese priests, none of whom spoke Thai.

So Chalathip spoke with Father John and decided to offer Pornchai a small apartment on the upper floor of her home just a few doors down the street from Father John’s. They spoke to me about this, but I was not going to second guess those with boots on the ground.

Chalathip owns several properties in Thailand, so in return Pornchai offered to help her manage them. Having become proficient in woodworking, Pornchai found that these skills translated easily into home repair. He dug up stumps, did landscaping, fixed leaky roofs, painted walls, sanded and restored furniture. Chalathip had two daughters. One had tragically died from an illness several years earlier and the other lived in the U.K. It did not take long for a strong maternal bond to form between her and Pornchai. This was literally divinely inspired. Chalathip never had a son, and Pornchai lost his Mother at a very early age.

Honor Thy Mother

Over recent months, Pornchai had enormous decisions to make. Chalathip had accompanied him and Father John on Pornchai’s first visit to the home and family from where he was taken at age eleven. It was in the village of Phuviang in Khon Kaen Province in the far northeast of Thailand — a nine-hour drive from Bangkok. I wrote about this hauntingly mysterious visit in “For Pornchai Moontri, a Miracle Unfolds in Thailand.”

In recent weeks, Pornchai had to return there to face a difficult decision. The half-completed home that his mother was building at the time of death in 2000, and the small amount of farmland around it, would have been taken from him unless he could come up with 80,000 Thai Baht in fees that had accumulated so he could effect a transfer of the house and land to his own name. Pornchai was frozen in place unable to decide what to do.

The amount seemed impossible for Pornchai, but in U.S. dollars, 80,000 is the equivalent of about $2,400. It just so happened that I had saved that amount in a just-in-case savings account. I did not want Pornchai to lose his mother’s home and land because it would have been gone forever. So I sent him what I had and he was able to complete the transfer. But the real Guardian Angel in this story was Chalathip. She went there with him, acting as a translator and trusted advisor pointing out options as Pornchai discerned under pressure what to do.

A kind reader has since returned my small investment to me. I am profoundly thankful, but most of all I am thankful for Chalathip. At every step of Pornchai’s long journey home, she has been a much needed teacher, guide, chauffeur and parent. She is near the age Pornchai’s Mother would be today had she lived, and I believe strongly that Chalathip, like me, was destined for this connection with Pornchai.

She returned with him to Phuviang four times in an effort to help him obtain his Thai ID for full citizenship. At some point I learned that after all my prayers to Mary Undoer of Knots, Chalathip was right there untangling all the complications that Pornchai faced in order to make Thailand his home again.

Father John and Chalathip have joined Pornchai in prayers at his Mother’s tomb at the Buddhist Temple cemetery nearby. Thailand is 99-percent Buddhist but there are many Catholic converts there and Catholicism has left a large footprint in Thailand. Chalathip, so very rare in Thailand, is Catholic since birth. Her deeply felt faith and fidelity to our Lord has bridged the chasm between hope and despair for Pornchai. He and I still speak every day, and I have recently detected that hope and some evidence of actual happiness in his voice knowing that he is not alone in his plight.

I detect it in my own voice as well of late. Night is often long and dark, but with the dawn comes — if not rejoicing, then at least a modicum of peace. It is what Jesus said would happen if we remain faithful. “Peace be with you.”

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Note from Fr. Gordon MacRae: Please join me here next week for the most important post I have ever written. It’s a matter of life and death!

And thank you for reading and sharing this post. Please “SUBSCRIBE” if you haven’t already. You may also like these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:

A Tale of Two Priests: Maximilian Kolbe and John Paul II

The Parable of a Priest and the Parable of a Prisoner

For Pornchai Moontri, A Miracle Unfolds in Thailand

Archangel Raphael on the Road with Pornchai Moontri

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Another note from Father Gordon: Our friends from Divine Mercy Thailand who sponsored Pornchai’s homecoming will be gathering with Father John’s community this week for a birthday celebration for Pornchai.

Also, Pornchai was recruited to teach an ocassional physical fitness class by the owner of MI Fitness in Pak Chong, Thailand. Mr. Mi (pronounced Mee) saw him working out at his gym and corralled him to teach a class. Mr. Mi and his wife created the poster below for their Facebook page and a short video of Pornchai’s first class. Just click on the poster to see the video.

For Pornchai Moontri, A Miracle Unfolds in Thailand

Divine Providence: Pornchai Moontri was brought to northern Thailand for his Thai ID, and then to Nong Bua Lamphu and the family he was taken from 36 years ago.

I hope you have read Pornchai’s first guest post from Thailand, “Free at Last Thanks to God and You!” This unbelievable story of grace and Divine Mercy now seems to be just beginning long after I thought it was coming to an end. But before I delve into that, I need to comment on the photo atop this post.

To formally welcome Pornchai to Bangkok, Father John Le, SVD and friends treated him to a cruise on the Chao Phraya River, a shipping lane that runs through the center of Bangkok and is the port city’s lifeline. There is a wonderful, painful, seemingly miraculous story that was set in motion just after this photo was taken at the end of February, 2021.

Pornchai’s return to Thailand after a 36-year absence was coordinated by Yela Smit, a Co-Founder of the Catholic apostolate, Divine Mercy Thailand. Yela had worked out a plan with me for Pornchai’s housing after his release from the required hotel quarantine. However, just before being released from his gruesome 5-month ICE detention to travel to Thailand, our longer term housing plan fell apart due to illness.

As soon as that happened, Father John Le offered sanctuary to Pornchai for a time of adjustment and discernment. Father John is a Vietnamese priest and a member of the Missionary Society of the Divine Word. His principal ministry in Thailand is the resettlement of refugees. Though this change in plans seemed to be by “accident,” Pornchai could not be in better hands.

On March 29, 1973, after the U.S. signed the Paris Peace Treaty with North and South Vietnam, the last U.S. troops left Vietnam. The Paris Accord did little to end the bloodshed after the departure of American forces, however. The continued presence of North Vietnamese soldiers in South Vietnam dissolved the cease-fire agreement. Without the presence of U.S. troops, thousands of refugees fled South Vietnam and a looming communist slaughter. Many fled aimlessly in small, crowded boats. John Le, at age 15, was among the famous “Boat People” who shook the conscience of the Western World.

Father Le knows painfully well what it means to be a displaced person. I was deeply grateful when Yela told me that he and his religious community stepped up to offer sanctuary to Pornchai. I had the task of telling Pornchai about this by telephone while he was still trapped in ICE detention. I remember telling him that often such a sudden change in plans is divinely inspired and becomes a source of grace.

I had no idea then just how prophetic those words would become. The story that follows is just the latest thread in the tapestry of extraordinary graces in the epic Divine Mercy story of Pornchai Moontri.

A Return to the Painful Past

In a telephone conversation with me just before Pornchai’s flight to Thailand, Father Le said that Pornchai must obtain his official Thai citizen ID which he would have received at age 16 had he been in Thailand at that time. He said he would drive Pornchai eight hours north of Bangkok to the City of Khon Kaen where his birth records are located. From there, Father Le said, they would go further north to the Province of Nong Bua Lamphu.

Father John said that his Order sponsors a home and clinic there for Thai children suffering from HIV. I was shocked by this, not by the nature of this much needed apostolate, but by the location. It was from that very place that Pornchai was taken at the age of 11 and brought to the United States against his will 36 years ago. This is an incredibly painful memory for Pornchai, and among the most traumatic times of his life. Most readers know by now the full story of all that happened after, but if you have missed it, please don’t. The story is told at “Human Trafficking: Thailand to America and a Cold Case in Guam.”

Having been abandoned by his parents at age two, Pornchai was hospitalized with malnutrition. His mother had left Pornchai and his brother to go to Bangkok to find work. She was a mere teenager herself at the time. Bangkok is nine hours away by car, and she did not drive. No one knows how she got there. But once there, Pornchai’s mother, Wannee, fell under the control of a most evil man, Richard Bailey, an American and former helicopter pilot in Vietnam. Bailey took Wannee to the United States in 1978.

They settled in Bailey’s home town of Bangor, Maine. Bailey knew that Wannee had two small sons living with her family in Thailand, but he had no interest in them until they were ages 11 and 13. He then sent Wannee to Thailand to retrieve them. If you have read the above article, then you already know all that happened next. Pornchai was victimized in unspeakable ways, and forced into homelessness at age 13. Living on the streets with no parental guidance or assistance, he became embroiled in a drunken struggle at age 18, and went to prison.

While awaiting trial, Pornchai’s mother came to visit him. Sent by Richard Bailey she was instructed to warn Pornchai of what would happen to her if Pornchai told the court the truth. This compelled Pornchai into silence and he refused to offer a defense. After the trial, Bailey relocated with Wannee to the U.S. territorial Island of Guam. Six years later, in 1998 Wannee gained the courage to leave Bailey and confront him with what he had inflicted on her and on Pornchai and his brother. She filed for divorce. The Guam court ordered Bailey to pay her a settlement sum of $1,000 per month and half the sale of their jointly-owned home in Guam. Wannee then returned to her family in Thailand to attempt to rebuild her life.

Pornchai was in his sixth year in prison in Maine at that time. Back in Thailand, Wannee had begun to have a home built on a small parcel of land she owned in Nong Bua Lamphu. She was counting on funds ordered by the Guam court to complete the home that she intended to live in with Pornchai upon his release from prison. In 2000, when it became clear that Bailey simply ignored the court restitution orders, Wannee returned to Guam to seek their enforcement.

But before her return, she visited Pornchai in prison. She told him that she was living back in Thailand building a home for them both, and she apologized for the years of disbelieving him when he told her the truth. She said she was on her way back to Guam to seek the funds needed to complete the home. Pornchai never saw his mother again. The 2000 Guam autopsy report concluded that she had been beaten to death. Her death remains a “cold case” homicide despite new evidence that has not been investigated by Guam authorities who to date remain silent.

The Odyssey Runs Full Circle

After applying for Pornchai’s official Thai ID in the City of Khon Kaen, Father John Le drove him another 90 minutes to Nong Bua Lamphu. The home Pornchai lived in as a small child had been destroyed and another rebuilt on the same site. Over his absence of 36 years, the village of small farms and rice paddies had grown into a more modern town. Nothing was recognizable to Pornchai, but just being there held him spellbound.

Having lost his mother to Bangkok and Richard Bailey at age two, Pornchai had also lost all memory of her. Growing up in Nong Bua Lamphu, he came to believe that his Aunt MaeSin was his mother. MaeSin was 36 years old when Pornchai was removed from her home. She is 72 today. Pornchai also has a cousin there who was 15 when he last saw her. She is 52 today. Before leaving Nontha Buri with Father John, Pornchai and he located his cousin and called to tell her he is back in Thailand and will be coming to visit. He had no idea what to expect and neither did his cousin or aunt. His family there did not know about all that had happened to Pornchai beyond the mere fact that he had been in prison in America.

Father John took a photograph of their reunion, captured below. A lifetime of loss and sorrow for both was suddenly transformed into a moment of great joy. I cannot begin to describe the cascade of emotions Pornchai experienced in this photo. I have been talking with him by phone at the end of each day, and walked with him through these overwhelming events.

But our story gets even more overwhelming. Pornchai learned that his Mother’s remains had been returned to Thailand and were interred in a nearby Buddhist Temple cemetery. Pornchai and Father John went there and Pornchai offered prayers at his Mother’s tomb and that of his grandmother, whom he remembers with great fondness and deep respect. Pornchai has allowed us to share this sacred moment.

I called Pornchai at 10:00 PM Bangkok time at the end of his first day in MaeSin’s company. She had suggested to Pornchai that he sleep in the house next door which was empty. MaeSin does not speak English and Pornchai last spoke Thai at age eleven 36 years ago. Love, even after decades, speaks its own language, but some details became lost in translation. When I called Pornchai, he was sitting in the empty house that his mother was having built. It had sat empty for 21 years since her death in Guam.

When Wannee left Thailand to visit Pornchai in prison in 2000 and return to Guam to confront Richard Bailey about the court’s terms, she had no idea that she was going to her death. The house she was building in Nong Bua Lamphu still contained all her personal belongings. When I called Pornchai late that night, he was sitting on the edge of his bed, overcome with emotion while surrounded by his Mother’s meager Earthly possessions. Her clothes were still in the closet and dresser. A photo of her with Priwan, Pornchai’s older brother, was on the nightstand. Pornchai had not yet been born.

Pornchai sobbed as he sat amid the wreckage of a life — his own as well as his Mother’s. It took me a moment to connect the dots and realize where Pornchai was. The emotional impact of it struck me like a thunderbolt. Pornchai is still processing all this. So am I. I told him that Divine Providence brought him to that house to honor his mother. And so he must.

I think a lot about Wannee. She had no one to protect her in life but there is much we can do for her in death. I believe that she is precious in the hands of God whose Providence has led us all to this moment. I remain deeply troubled by the unfinished business on the Island of Guam where authorities have been unresponsive to new evidence and our inquiries. These latest events are for me a wake-up call reminding me that the odyssey of Pornchai Moontri, though having run full circle, remains incomplete.

Father John Le left Pornchai in Nong Bua Lamphu for a week while he attended a meeting with his Order. On Sunday, March 7, Father Ben, a member of the order, was sent to pick up Pornchai at MaeSin’s home and take him to a nearby Catholic Mass, his first entirely in Thai. On March 12, Father John returned to accompany Pornchai on the nine-hour drive back to the Divine Word Mission in Nontha Buri.

As we wander among these dangling threads behind the Great Tapestry of God, please pray for Pornchai that he will be strengthened in his faith as he confronts the brokenness of his past.

As for me, I have been privileged to walk with Pornchai through the wreckage left behind by someone else. At this juncture, I can only borrow from the great Robert Frost in Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. I cannot yet retreat from this.

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“I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.”

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: We would be in dire straits right now without Father John Le and the Society of the Divine Word who now comprise our boots on the ground in Thailand. I am deeply moved by their amazing support of my friend at this critical time. If you wish to help, please see our “Special Events” page.

And please share this post, and these related posts referenced herein:

Free at Last Thanks to God and You!

Human Trafficking: Thailand to America and a Cold Case in Guam

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Please share this post!

Free at Last Thanks to God and You!

Left to right: Pornchai Moontri, Yela Smit, Father John Le, SVD, and behind them the one who brought them together.

The following is our first guest post by Pornchai Moontri in Thailand with a message of thanks and hope for our readers Beyond These Stone Walls.

Introduction by Father Gordon MacRae : I will be forever in debt to our readers who have opened their minds and hearts to the plight of my friend, Pornchai Moontri. The task now ahead of him is immense. It was an ordeal getting Pornchai out of prison. Now we face the task of getting prison out of Pornchai. He needs the help and prayers of all of us to conquer this adjustment.

If you have read Pornchai's traumatic history best captured in “Human Traffic: The ICE Deportation of Pornchai Moontri” — then you know that the last real home he knew was at age 11 before he was removed from Thailand. Fleeing from a nightmare existence in Bangor, Maine, he became a homeless teenager and then, at age 18, a prisoner.

For the last 29 years, his entire world consisted of a prison cell and a 300-yard walk to a woodshop where he became a proficient craftsman. Now he is dropped into the middle of Bangkok, Thailand. The adjustment ahead is immense.

Sensing his anxiety in a recent telephone conversation, I asked Pornchai what he is feeling and experiencing. What he said in response nearly brought me to tears. He said, “People have to understand that the only home I have ever had was in a prison cell with you.”

I choked on those words. In one sense, it is a testament to grace. Only Divine Mercy could make a prison cell feel like a home. But now Pornchai has the daunting challenge of leaving the traumas and trials of the past behind and living life in the light of Divine Mercy, a light that has captured him — has captured us both — in the great adventure of faith and hope.

I asked Pornchai to write candidly about this turning of the tide in his life. These are his words:

A Letter from Pornchai

To My Dear Friends Beyond These Stone Walls: I am at a loss for words, but I will try my best to tell you about where I am right now, and how I got here. A couple weeks ago, my friend, Father G, wrote about my return to Thailand after being away for 36 years. His Post was “Pornchai Moontri and the Long Road to Freedom.” It made me laugh in parts, and it also made me cry.

Father G left something out. This is something that I told him about in a phone call right after my first night in hotel quarantine solitary confinement. I have to first say that it was a lot nicer than my last stay in solitary confinement which lasted seven long years. Then I was sent to another prison where I ended up in a cell with Father G.

Sixteen years have passed since then. The story of all that happened in those years is filled, as Father G says, with pain and suffering but also with triumph. He says that he feels sad about my leaving, but more than anything, he says he feels “triumphant.” I feel that too, but I also feel deep gratitude. Both of those are sort of new to me.

I told Father G last week that as I lay on my bed in my first night in Bangkok on February 9 after 29 years in prison, I was exhausted in every way you could think of, but I could not sleep. I was overwhelmed with many emotions. All I could think about was where I would be right now if I never met Father G.

There were so many “what-ifs” raging through my mind that night. What if Father G had never been sent to prison? What if he took the easy way out with the plea deal they tried to con him into 27 years ago? We would have never met. What if I was sent to some other state besides New Hampshire? What if Father G and I never ended up in the same place? What if he never started writing to the world Beyond These Stone Walls? What if all of you never even heard of me? What if Father G had been a weaker man? What if he moved away after all my efforts to block anyone from ever entering my life? If any one of those things happened, I know today, I would be lost forever.

Every one of these questions, and many more were answered in advance by God. My head was spinning that night as I thought of all the times in the last 16 years when I was turning down one road only to find Father G pointing me toward another. Prison also brought many low points in our story that could fill these pages and depress anyone reading them. That is the nature of prison, and 29 years of it means 29 years of low points.

Prison is a humiliating, empty, meaningless existence, but Father G and I changed that. As I lay sleepless in bed pondering my freedom in my first night in Bangkok, only the high points filled my mind. There are so many of them, too many to tell you about in a single post. You already know about many of them, but I will try to tell you again about the ones that changed my life the most.

The Sacrifice of Fatherhood

I will always remember the first time I walked into Father G’s cell before we became roommates. The first thing I saw was the mirror. There was a strange card with a balding man dressed half as a priest and half as a prisoner. I asked Father G, “Is this you?” That’s when I was introduced to Saint Maximilian Kolbe who became the source of how we lived as prisoners.

When Father G and I became roommates, I was not able to trust anyone. My life’s experiences imposed that on me. I would always be in my upper bunk so I could see anyone coming in and could get to them before they got to me. Life in homelessness on the streets followed by life in prison does this to you.

Once a week, late on Sunday nights after all the prisoner counts and the lights went out, Father G had this weird ritual. I would pretend to be asleep and would watch with one eye open. What on Earth is this strange guy doing? In a corner of the concrete countertop in our cell, he would set up a little book light, some books, and put something around his neck. Then he would take a round piece of bread and a few drops of something and hold them up before eating them.

So one day I asked him about this and he said he was offering Mass. Why? I asked him. He said that it is the one time and place where Heaven touches us. I asked him if I could also do it and he said, “Only if you agree to be the lector.” So Father G told me all about the Mass and I would from then on stay awake to join him. I would do the Mass readings as well. Without my knowing it, profound changes began to take shape inside of me.

Also in 2007, I was visited by agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement who told me that I would be having a court hearing that could end with my deportation to Thailand. I was summoned to a place where video hearings are held in the prison. A Judge Shapiro told me that I am ordered deported to Thailand at the end of my sentence. I had nothing in Thailand, and no one. As Father G once wrote, I had no future, no hope, and no God. There was only Father G who never wavered.

Beyond These Stone Walls

And there were times when we became separated. Prison is set up to always demonstrate that we are powerless over our lives. We were sometimes pawns in what Father G described as “spiritual warfare.” Sometimes the agendas of others were imposed on us. One time, some unknown prison official added a note to Father G’s file saying that he has a history of violence. It was not at all true, but the note sat there for six years before some official spotted it and decided I should be moved away from him.

Such things are never reversed in prison, but he asked me to trust in God. I was forced to live with a transgender man while some gangster with a real history of violence was moved in with Father G. I prayed. Within 24 hours, it was exposed as a big mistake and I was moved back with Father G. Every time this sort of thing happened, and we were separated, it was reversed in just a few days. I began to feel that we had an invisible shield around us. Father G told me that our Patron Saints are our allies in spiritual warfare. I went from doubting this to very much believing it. I saw this with my own eyes.

When I was told that I must be deported to Thailand at the end of my sentence, it was hard for me to find any hope. I told Father G that in my own mind I had what I called “Plan B.” I thought my only option was to make sure that I never left prison. It was all I knew and I could not imagine another existence. Father G asked me to set “Plan B” aside because another plan will come along to take its place. He said, “We will just have to build a bridge to Thailand.” “Yeah, Right!” I thought. How are we going to do this from inside a prison cell? “Get real!”

Then one day in summer of 2009, Father G came into our cell after talking with someone on the telephone. He told me that someone asked him to write on a weekly basis for a blog from prison. I was sent to prison in 1992 and Father G in 1994. Neither of us knew what a blog was. He said it would be a sort of prison journal and people around the world would read it.

Father G found a British poem that he liked called “Stone Walls Do Not a Prison Make.” He said we need a name for this blog so I suggested “These Stone Walls” so that’s what we called it until I left in September. Then it became “Beyond These Stone Walls.” Father G would sit at his typewriter on a Saturday morning with no idea what to write, then he would type all afternoon and mail his posts to Father George David Byers for scanning.

We could never see the site, but we got a monthly report which was a total mystery to us. In the first month we had 40 readers. In the next month, four times that, then month after month it turned into many thousands in many countries. We could not figure this out. In my writing class, I wrote a poem about his constant “tap-tap-tap” in our cell every Saturday. Here it is:

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“My roommate is a rabid writer.
Tap, tap. Tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap.
He types until my mind winds tighter.
Tap, tap. Tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap.
He never has an unpublished thought.
Tap, tap. Tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap.
He types and types til my nerves are naught.
Tap, tap. Tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap.

My roommate’s also a real good friend,
Tap, tap. Tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap.
And stays that way to the bitter end.
Tap, tap. Tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap.
And we all like the result, you see,
Tap, tap. Tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap.
Cuz some of what he types is ’bout me!”
TAP, tap. Tap, TAP, tap. Tap, TAP.”

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Our Summons to Divine Mercy

From here on, my life began to change with what I once thought was just my own hard work. Not so. Today I see a powerful grace at work in that cell. I did not have a name for it then, but I do now. It’s called Divine Mercy. I was drawn to it like a moth to a flame.

In the time to follow, I earned my high school diploma with top honors. Then I earned two continuing education diplomas from the Stratford Career Institute in psychology and social work, and excelled in theology courses from Catholic Distance University. I became proficient in woodworking and model shipbuilding. You can see some of my work at “Imprisoned by Walls, Set Free by Wood.”

I never had much in life to brag about except maybe for one thing. Despite all the darkness, when I finally saw some light I walked toward it. I decided to become Catholic. Father G never even mentioned this to me. It was just the sheer force of grace. To honor him, I chose his birthday (April 9) as the date for my conversion, but the prison chaplain, a Catholic deacon, asked me to postpone it until the next day. It was Divine Mercy Sunday, something that would become the very center of my life.

Everything changed. Marian Helper Editor Felix Carroll read our blog (yes, it’s now “our” blog!) and he contacted me for an interview. He included my conversion story in his now famous book, Loved, Lost, Found: 17 Divine Mercy Conversions. You can read the chapter about me at “Pornchai Moontri: Mercy Behind Those Stone Walls.”

The book made its way to Thailand, and now, so have I. The bridge that I once thought was impossible was built right before my very eyes. I thank you, my friends, for I would not be here without you. It was your reading and sharing these writings around the world that made this story possible. You have been the instruments of a miracle.

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A Post Script from Father Gordon MacRae: I have been able to talk with Pornchai daily since his arrival in Thailand. This has helped much to ease him into this new chapter in his story. It is an immense task to go from 29 years in prison to a foreign land.

I have deeply felt gratitude to Yela Smit, Co-Chair of Divine Mercy Thailand, and Father John Le, SVD, from the Society of the Divine Word. Father John and his community have offered sanctuary to Pornchai to help in this transition. It is a great gift to which I have pledged some monthly support. Want to help? See how at our SPECIAL EVENTS page.

You may also want to read and share the posts referenced herein:

Getting Away with Murder on the Island of Guam

Pornchai Moontri and the Long Road to Freedom

Imprisoned by Walls, Set Free by Wood

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Padre Pio: Witness for the Defense of Wounded Souls

Padre Pio and Maximilian Kolbe, the Patron Saints behind These Stone Walls, have an obscure thread of connection that magnifies witness, sacrifice, and fatherhood.

There was an eerie sense about us as Pornchai Maximilian Moontri and I walked around the concrete prison yard at 0500 on September 8, the Feast of the Nativity of Mary. There was not yet any sign of the dawn, nor was there any moon in the sky. If there were stars, we were blinded to them by the blazing prison lights reflected from the high walls that surrounded us. I asked Pornchai to take a long last look at these walls, for he was about to enter the final stretch of his long road to freedom.

Just then, a sliver of bright light emerged above the building where we have lived in a 60-square-foot cell for the last three of our years in prison — 28 for Pornchai and 26 for me. We stood still to watch as the bright half-moon arose above all the walls. I told Pornchai that he will gaze upon the same moon in Thailand that I will see from this very spot. There was a long silence as he considered this, and then it was followed by tears. I had been putting a brave face on things up to this point, but I could no longer contain it.

It is difficult for men to talk and sob at the same time. I do not suggest that women cry more than men. Perhaps men do not cry enough. It is just that there was so much to say, and so I choked back the tears until another time. If you have been reading These Stone Walls for any length of time, then you understand what was transpiring that morning. It was expressed best by Pornchai himself in a recent guest post, “Hope and Prayers for My Friend Left Behind.”

Soon after, we had to end that walk, after fourteen years sharing and building faith, conversion and redemption in a tiny prison cell, Pornchai was taken away and we will never see each other again in this life.

Backing up a little, it was Pornchai who brought up the most urgent and necessary part of our conversation that morning. It goes back to one of the first conversations we ever had about Pornchai’s faith experience. It was back in 2006 just before we were moved into the same cell. He described this in his post above. He walked into my cell, saw an image of St. Maximilian Kolbe on the mirror, and asked, “Is this you?” He described that as one of the most important questions of his life.

Fourteen years later, as we walked in the pre-dawn light of a half moon, he said through tears, “Now I have the answer. You have saved me, but no one is saving you.” We talked a lot about our patron saint, of the mystery of how he came into our lives, and of what his witness means for us. Maximilian went to prison because he was writing the truth. I went to prison on trumped up charges, and have been writing the truth ever since. I told Pornchai that he is a very important and powerful part of that truth. I said that no matter what happens to me now, “you are a living witness to the truth that no past is lived at the expense of the present, that no wounds can prevent a soul in search of God from emerging above prison walls.”

The Wounds of Padre Pio

At this writing, Pornchai is now in a tomb of solitary confinement, with no ability to communicate with the outside world. I can support him only with my prayers, but this should only last a few days. By the time you are reading this, he will have already emerged from that to enter another purgatory: ICE detention awaiting deportation. This is probably the most disorganized, haphazard, inhumane and one-size-fits-all thing that the American government bureaucracy does. But we have a team of advocates working to make this stay as brief as possible. They are in touch with me every day.

The Thai consulate will — hopefully soon — arrange a repatriation flight for Pornchai to return to his native land after a 36-year absence. Under ICE rules, he is allowed to have nothing but the clothes he is wearing. We had the foresight to pack a box of his treasured few possessions — a handmade rosary sent to him by TSW, reader Kathleen Riney, a Saint Maximilian medal, some photographs, and a set of Divine Mercy books by Father Michael Gaitley and others. These include Loved, Lost, Found by Felix Carroll which features a chapter about Pornchai’s life. The box is on its way to Thailand and may arrive ahead of him.

When Pornchai himself arrives in Bangkok, he will have a final 14-day stay in solitary confinement, but it will not be in a cell. The Thai government requires a 14-day quarantine period in a Bangkok hotel. Pornchai will not be allowed to leave his hotel room for the 14 days, but it will be unlike all previous experiences of solitary confinement.

[Editor’s note: You can see the solitary confinement unit that held Pornchai decades ago at wgbh.org/frontline/solitarynation. Pornchai knows many of the solitary confinement prisoners in this documentary about his first prison in Maine. If you haven’t seen this, you can’t begin to know what Pornchai has been through. It’s traumatic just to watch it. It’s the video right at the top of that link.]

One of our friends in Thailand will drop off a Samsung smart phone for Pornchai’s use so he and I can communicate. After 28 years in prison, he has never seen a smart phone. His first assignment is to learn how to answer the phone.

His second assignment will be to learn how to use the phone to read the post that you are reading right now. I want him to see what followed our painful discussion on the morning he left in tears — and left me in tears as well. I want him to ponder the mystery of the other patron saint who insinuated himself behind These Stone Walls with us. I want him to ponder the graces imparted to us by Saint Padre Pio who bore the wounds of Christ for fifty years.

I have been aware of Padre Pio for most of my life. As the young Capuchin studying (aka, misled by) pop psychology in the 1970s, a story I told in “Prison Journal: A Midsummer Night’s Midlife Crisis,” I am ashamed to write that I once denounced Padre Pio’s wounds as psychosomatic. I hope he forgives me for my ignorance back when I knew everything. I knew a lot about Padre Pio back then, but I did not know Padre Pio. Now I do. Pornchai knows him as well. He came to us behind These Stone Walls in a personal and powerful way.

I had already been in prison on false witness for four years back in 1998. I had, for all of those years, been living in a horrible situation with eight men in each prison cell designed for only four. To “honor” Catholics’ reverence for Padre Pio then — six years before he was canonized by Saint John Paul II in 2002 — The New York Times ran an article alleging that Padre Pio was the subject of twelve Vatican investigations in his lifetime. The unjust and inflammatory article alleged that “Padre Pio had sex with female penitents twice a week.”

This was the first inkling I ever had that Padre Pio suffered more than the visible wounds of Christ. He also suffered wounds upon his name, his integrity, his priesthood. Here we were, thirty years to the day since his death, and the “Scandal Sheet of Record” was still repeating an unfounded story for the sole purpose of deflating the faith of Catholics who reverenced him. It resonated with me in a most personal way.

Seven years passed. In April, 2005, a newspaper of integrity, The Wall Street Journal, published a two-part account of false witness, wrongful prosecution and public hysteria entitled, “A Priest’s Story” by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, Dorothy Rabinowitz. The article was read all over the world. As a result of it, Bill Donohue at the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights asked me to submit an article about my own awareness of false witness. My article was published in the November 2005 issue of Catalyst under the title, “Sex Abuse and Signs of Fraud.”

I was surprised to see that I shared the cover of that issue of Catalyst with a story about how Padre Pio was similarly defamed throughout his life and even after death. None of it was ever substantiated nor was it supported by evidence in any form. On the contrary, many witnesses had testified in Vatican investigations that the detractors were themselves discredited beyond any doubt. That did not stop The New York Times from slander.

The Echoes of a Special Blessing

Among the readers of the WSJ series on my trial’s perversion of justice was Pierre Matthews, a Belgian with dual American citizenship who at the time was living in Chicago. The articles were his first realization — as they were for many — that the whole truth about the nature of Catholic scandal had not been told by the mainstream media. Pierre wrote to me. Months later, on a return trip from Belgium, he diverted his flight itinerary for a stop in Boston from where he drove up to Concord, NH to visit me in prison.

Later in 2005, Pornchai Moontri — who had spent the previous seven years in solitary confinement in Maine — was transferred to the Concord, NH prison where we met. In 2006 we became friends. In 2007 we became roommates. In 2010, on Divine Mercy Sunday, Pornchai renounced his troubled past to become Catholic. Later, in September 2010, I wrote “Saints Alive! Padre Pio and the Stigmata: Sanctity on Trial.”

That post told an amazing story. In an earlier visit with Pierre Matthews, I told him about Pornchai, about how our long and winding roads converged, and about Pornchai’s decision to renounce his past and become Catholic. Pierre told me a remarkable story. He said that when he was growing up in Belgium, his father sent him to a boarding school. In the 1950s, at just about the time I was born, Pierre’s school sponsored a trip to Italy. Pierre’s father wrote to him saying that his trip will take him near a place called San Giovanni Rotondo where there is a very famous priest and mystic who bears the wounds of Christ.

Pierre’s father instructed his skeptical 16-year-old son to take a train to San Giovanni Rotondo and ask to see Padre Pio. Being 16, Pierre did not want to go. But his father was insistent so Pierre read his Father’s account of Padre Pio’s mystical fame that was at the time being suppressed by the Church, but rising up from the sensus fidelium — the sense of the faithful.

When Pierre Matthews learned that Pornchai was to become Catholic, he sent me a registered letter asking — no, insisting — that he be permitted to become Pornchai’s Godfather. Pierre asked me to submit a special request to the prison warden asking approval for Pierre to fly over from Belgium to visit both me and Pornchai. In all the years that I had been here, such a thing was never allowed. No visitor can visit two prisoners at the same time. So I submitted the request with the intent of sending the denial back to Pierre. To my shock, the request came back with a single word: “approved.”

During the special visit, Pierre told us that he indeed took a train to San Giovanni Rotondo at age 16 over a half century earlier. He said he rang the monastery doorbell and asked a friar if he could see Padre Pio. “Impossible” came the curt reply. Pierre explained that his father had sent him from Belgium so the friar invited him inside to be given a prayer card to show his father that he was there. When he stepped inside to be given the card, a strange man in a Capuchin habit, with hands heavily bandaged, was just then walking down the stairs. His eyes were fixed upon Pierre, Padre Pio approached Pierre, placed his bandaged hands upon his head, and blessed him.

Visiting us 55 years later, Pierre said that he knows this blessing was meant for us. He spoke of the long, winding journey from faith that led to his learning about me, then about Pornchai, and then, when These Stone Walls began in 2009, it was what drew Pierre back to faith. It was then, in 2010, that I added Saint Padre Pio as one of the Patron Saints of These Stone Walls. Through Pornchai’s Godfather, Padre Pio shared his wounds with us and became a witness for the defense against our own wounds. It was Pierre who first noted that I was condemned to prison on September 23, 1994, the Feast of Saint Padre Pio.

Among the many letters of Padre Pio to the thousands of pilgrims and penitents who wrote to him, was one dated in the year before his death on September 23, 1968. In that letter, Padre Pio advised a suffering soul to enroll in the Knights at the Foot of the Cross, a spiritual mission founded by Father Maximilian Kolbe for the offering of life’s wounds as a share in the suffering of Christ. I was amazed to read that Padre Pio had such an awareness of our other patron saint two decades before St. Maximilian was canonized. Pornchai and I are both members of the Militia Immaculata and the Knights at the Foot of the Cross.

Our beloved friend Pierre, Pornchai’s Godfather, passed away in Belgium on July 7 this year. Pornchai and I were blessed to be able to talk with him by telephone in the weeks before his death. He never took redemption for granted, but I know with the certainty of faith that he and Padre Pio have renewed their bond.

So Pornchai, my son, if you are reading this then you must know that there is much more to our life’s wounds than the prison walls that surrounded us and surround me still. To be free of them is not just a matter of the body, but of the heart and soul. So be free. Be free enough to convey to others the great gifts imparted to us by these patron saints. You will no longer have a guest post at These Stone Walls. You will now be a partner in mission, writing from Divine Mercy Thailand about how God is inspiring hearts and souls through the transfiguration of your wounds.

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Please visit our Special Events page.

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Saints Maximilian Kolbe and Padre Pio were both canonized by Saint John Paul II.

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Human Traffic: The ICE Deportation of Pornchai Moontri

Taken from Thailand to America at age 11 by a now-convicted sex offender, this Thai victim will now be an ICE detainee awaiting forced deportation 36 years later.

Posted August 19, 2020; updated July 11, 2022 by Father Gordon MacRae

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Editor’s Note: This revised article by Father Gordon MacRae is a necessary expansion of the stunning post by Pornchai Moontri entitled “Independence Day in Thailand.”

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“I’m reclaiming my time!” That term became a familiar line of political theater during a recent congressional grilling of Attorney General William Barr. Our friend, Father George David Byers, wrote a short post highlighting the ridiculous nature of that sad moment in American politics.

I’m reclaiming my time, too. All 26 years of it. That’s how long I have been unjustly held in an American prison while its crazy politics play out before polarized audiences. At about the time I reach the 26-year mark in September 2020, my friend, Pornchai Moontri will have been handed over to the hidden national shame of ICE detention. It is easy to stay on the sidelines and keep this topic out of sight and out of mind until someone you know and care about is on the receiving end of it.

This looming deportation process, especially its weeks or months in overcrowded detention, is a personal crisis for us. The politics of it do not help at all. A word of advice: Try to avoid having a crisis in a deeply divided presidential election year. It will inevitably become subjected to the political, and some of those around you will use it to score political talking points.

It has already been suggested to me that President Donald Trump is to blame for my friend’s looming deportation, and for the inhumane treatment that he and other ICE detainees will endure. The deportation order that is just now unfolding in the case of Pornchai Moontri was a decision of a federal judge in 2007. It’s the result of a one-size-fits-all policy requiring removal of any non-citizen who commits any crime on U.S. soil regardless of circumstances.

Then it was suggested to me that ICE detention and forced removal is a strictly Republican endeavor that Democrats would happily fix if elected and given the power to do so. I subscribe to a publication of the Human Rights Defense Center called Prison Legal News. If anything, it leans to the left of our divisive political spectrum. In the July 2017 issue is a well researched article by Derek Gilna entitled “Deportations of Undocumented Reach Record High.” It is an analysis of deportations in the six years prior to the 2016 election. Here is an important excerpt:

“In the past six years, the number of people removed from the country against their will far surpassed the totals of the previous administration of George W. Bush reaching over two million people. According to human rights advocates, President Obama had become the ‘Deporter in Chief.’”

So please don’t subject the real human tragedy of what is happening now to the polarity of our “if you’re not with us you’re against us” politics. We are struggling right now behind These Stone Walls and I do not want our struggle to become political ammunition. Instead, I want to point you to something deeply unjust — demonic would be a better word — that has happened here. In his recent post, “Pornchai Moontri: Hope and Prayers, for a Friend Left Behind,” Pornchai wrote something that struck me like lightning and stabbed at my conscience as an American:

“In December of 1985 I was taken from Thailand and brought against my will to the United States. Though it was my mother who took me, I did not know her. She had abandoned my brother and me in Thailand when I was only two years old. She waited until I was age eleven to come and take me away because her life was under the control of a monster who sent her to bring me to him. It is that simple, and that terrible.”

An American Horror Story

Pornchai’s mother would later be murdered — beaten to death according to the autopsy report — on the U.S. Territorial Island of Guam in the company of Richard Bailey. Referred to by Pornchai as “An American Horror Story,” the case remains today an unsolved “cold case” homicide despite new evidence pointing to Bailey.

The murder occurred in 2000 as Wannee filed for divorce from Bailey and just before court-ordered dispersal of finances and property to Wannee was to take place. After the murder, Bailey sold his home and left Guam without settling the financial court orders with Wannee’s estate. He returned to Thailand to bring back a young Thai woman barely out of her teens. They settled in Oregon.

Back in the 1970s when Bailey prepared to bring Wannee from Bangkok to the United States, he knew she left two young sons behind in Thailand but he had no interest in a two-year-old. They settled in Bailey’s town of Bangor, Maine. Just blocks away, Stephen King was writing his own American horror stories. Bailey bided his time until Pornchai was 11 years old. Then, in 1985 he sent Wannee to Thailand to retrieve her sons.

This is a clear story of human trafficking, but it remains off that radar screen. In Bailey’s devious and narcissistic mind, these were human beings whose rights were at his personal disposal. Bailey would not permit Wannee to apply for U.S. citizenship. He knew her sons would one day reach an age that no longer interested him. It would thus be easier to be rid of them if they were not citizens.

In September 2018, Richard Bailey was finally brought to some form of justice. He entered a “no contest” plea deal, but was found guilty in Penobscot (Maine) Superior Court on forty felony counts of violent sexual assault against Pornchai and his brother. He was sentenced to 44 years in prison, all suspended, and 18 years of supervised probation. He returned to his lakeside home in Oregon without ever serving a day in prison.

That the vicious sexual and physical assaults against Pornchai and his brother had never previously been investigated or prosecuted remains another unsolved mystery. They took place over four years after Pornchai’s arrival in Bangor in 1985. There were school reports of a battered child. There were neighbors who expressed concern about the bleeding and traumatized Asian boy at their door pleading for help in a foreign language. There were reports from sheriff’s deputies who picked up a runaway child and handed him back over to Richard Bailey because they could not understand his protests.

Bailey’s violence and perversion drove Pornchai into homelessness — a teen stranded in a foreign country. There were reports filed by staff at the Maine Youth Center that took custody of Pornchai at age 14. There were reports when he was made a ward of the state at age 15. There were reports when he again became a homeless adolescent living alone on the streets of Bangor at age 16. It does not take rocket science to connect all this to the offense of a drunken 18-year-old in 1992. But all this history just disappeared.

Pornchai could not himself raise it. Right under the noses of state officials, Richard Bailey sent a battered and desperate Thai woman — Pornchai’s mother — to warn him while held pre-trial at the county jail that her life would be in danger if Pornchai told. Pornchai thus refused to participate in his own defense.

At sentencing, Judge Margaret Kravchuk told him that he was given a new life in America but squandered it.

Certainly no one can claim that sexual abuse was not on the public radar at that time. Just one state away in New Hampshire in 1988, a witch hunt was underway involving Catholic priests. The story that sent me to prison was just taking shape at that time while some local lawyers were taking out their calculators. The dollar signs were dangled before them by a local sex-crimes detective who brought over 1,000 cases while Maine, right next door, was ignoring the predator who was openly destroying the lives of three young Thai immigrants. A lot of people in the State of Maine covered up for Richard Bailey. Who investigates the investigators?

Fifth Commandment: Thou shalt not kill

Getting Away with Murder on the Island of Guam

On the U.S. territorial Island of Guam, officials have reacted with silence about inquiries into the unsolved homicide of Wannee in 2000. The Guam police, the Attorney General, and the U.S. Attorney there have been only minimally responsive over the last two years.

Pornchai Moontri, whose life was destroyed by Richard Bailey when he was twelve to fourteen years old, has now spent the last 28 years in prison for an offense that Bailey himself set in motion. In days or weeks, Pornchai will be moved to an overcrowded ICE holding facility where he will be forced to wait out the Covid-19 pandemic sleeping on a dayroom floor filled with ICE detainees.

Meanwhile, Richard Bailey, now convicted of 44 felony counts of sexual abuse against Pornchai and his brother, has not spent a single night in prison. He waits out the pandemic in his lakeside home in Oregon. He has simply ignored attempts by Pornchai’s advocates to recover what he owes to Wannee’s estate — funds that could make an enormous difference to someone who must now start his shattered life over. Not a single American attorney would agree to represent Pornchai for civil protection.

In his moving recent post, “ Hope and Prayers for My Friend Left Behind,” Pornchai himself raised the enormous paradox in our parallel stories of imprisonment:

“Father Gordon MacRae freed me from the evil this man inflicted on me. He taught me that this evil is not mine to keep. What do I do with such a story? If Father G had not been here, what would have become of me? He freed my mind and soul from the horror inflicted by a real predator. It breaks my heart that the man responsible for my freedom will now be left behind in prison.”

These are Pornchai’s questions, but they are not the questions I would ask. For 26 years, I have witnessed the unbridled outrage leveled at Catholic bishops and priests over allegations of sexual abuse and the necessity of protecting the vulnerable from abusers. But Americans are very selective in their outrage. Is there none left for Richard Bailey? Is there no outrage for Pornchai’s expulsion from the very country where his horrific abuse took place?

Some time ago, I wrote a post entitled, “President Donald Trump’s First Step Act for Prison Reform.” This President undertook a bold initiative for criminal justice. He called for the removal of “The Box” from all federal employment application forms. “The Box” was infamous among prisoners. It was a check-off box on most employment applications asking if the applicant has ever been convicted of a felony. In effect, it was an extension of a prison sentence that had long since been fully served. It took a non-politician to do what most politicians lack the political will or courage to do. “The Box” served only one purpose: to prevent former prisoners from finding meaningful jobs.

The President’s rationale for this is the fact that if a man or woman applying for a job had ever been in prison, the fact that they are now filling out this application means that the sentence has been served and it is over.

ICE Detention

By mid-September 2020, Pornchai Moontri will have fully served the entire sentence that the State of Maine imposed upon him at age eighteen. He has accomplished many things in that time, and is today an asset, not a hindrance, to his country. His country is Thailand, but he was taken from there as a child by a monstrous American predator who has never answered for it. Now America will keep the predator in freedom while expelling the victim.

The truth is that Pornchai wants to go and is ready to go. Thanks to These Stone Walls, a future has been built there for him, and a fresh start with people who will care for him. Our well-founded concern is not for his deportation, but for the added insult and injury that he must emerge from prison just to wait out this pandemic in a horribly crowded ICE detention facility — aka, another prison. He could not be deemed any threat to the community because his sentence is over. If he were not an ICE detainee, he would simply walk free.

And he could not be considered a flight risk because he has worked long and hard to build a future in Thailand that he now looks forward to. The Divine Mercy Thailand organization has a team waiting for Pornchai. The Father Ray Foundation (www.fr-ray.org) has a plan for training him and putting his skills to use. It is an awesome place as a visit to their website will show.

Public risk and flight risk are the only real reasons why ICE detainees are held. We were hoping and praying that bail could be arranged for Pornchai to live in the community until Thailand can open its borders for a flight during this pandemic. Some TSW readers nearby had an ideal location for Pornchai to spend those weeks learning instead of just surviving. However that was deemed to be impossible.

What follows is a recent letter I received from another former prisoner, an Asian friend from here who recently went through ICE deportation and is now back in his native country after an ordeal lasting months:

“You will first sit in a holding tank with a bunch of junkies and young criminals whining about a two-week county sentence in a county jail. Then at about 11 PM you will get moved to a federal detention pod. If you are lucky you might get a cell with one other person, but more likely you will be sent to a crowded dayroom with a thin mattress. You will have to find a place to put it among the crowd. If there are no bunks, they use these things like plastic canoes to sleep in. You will have to find a place to park it. One of the cells is kept empty so all the detainees living on the dayroom floor can use the single toilet in it.”

Justice is supposed to be blind, but sometimes it is deaf and dumb too. Our friend deserves better than to go to his new life like this. Here is a small exercise in the blindness of criminal justice you can easily do and that we now hope those who measure Pornchai will do. He has the most unlikely internet footprint of any person who has been in a U.S. prison for 28 years. Do a google search for “Pornchai Moontri” using the quotes. It is a great stretch of the imagination that the results are anything less than a good man deserving of our protection. America was once better than this.

Please pray for us as we do for you.

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UPDATE: July 11, 2022 — Guam Daily Post reporter Nick Delgado has published an article about the plethora of “cold case” unsolved homicides on the U.S. Territorial Island of Guam. Pornchai’s mother, Wannee, is number 70 on the list. Guam’s authorities remain unresponsive to new evidence and other new information on this case.

Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Pornchai Moontri was handed over to ICE on September 11, 2020. He and we were told by ICE officials that he would be in Thailand by the end of the month. Instead, he spent the next 150 days in a room holding 70 detainees in a for-profit ICE detention facility in Jenna, Louisiana. He arrived in Thailand in mid-March 2021. As of June 19, 2021 his Thai State ID and full citizenship remain mired in bureaucracy. Without it, he is unable to find work, open an account, or support himself.

For the full story of Pornchai’s life, don’t miss:

Human Trafficking: Thailand to America and a Cold Case in Guam.

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