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Every now and again we will deal with matters pertaining to possible extradition to the United States, criminal warrants things like that. It has not been overly common especially here recently but in the past we saw this a lot more often. People ask me about extradition to and from Thailand and we mostly see extradition cases involving foreigners who are being pulled back into another jurisdiction, usually their home jurisdiction if you will, the jurisdiction of their nationality. 

A recent article from the Thai Examiner, that is the thaiexaminer.com, the article is titled: German Drug Cartel Chiefs Arrested in Raids. Quoting directly: "Immigration Bureau teams arrested two German drug cartel leaders on Tuesday on Phuket and Koh Phangnan. The pair led an organization that produced and distributed a range of psychoactive drug cocktails across Europe from Germany leading to several deaths. They were lying low in Thailand for years." Quoting further: "Two Germans who once led a large drug cartel operating across Europe from Germany were taken down by Immigration Bureau officers on Tuesday," Immigration Bureau; interesting. Let me get to that in a minute. "And arrested on foot of an extradition request from German authorities resulting in arrest warrants issued by the criminal court in April. The Immigration Bureau is reporting the arrest on Tuesday of two German Nationals wanted on an extradition request from the Federal Republic of Germany for the roles in organizing a European wide drug production and distribution syndicate."

A lot more information in there but the reason I brought up Immigration Bureau is it is not just standard Thai Police that often get involved in extradition matters. In fact as a practical matter I kind of think of it as a crib notes or shorthand version of extradition where you see Immigration get involved where you basically see a foreign government says “hey we have reason to believe that this person is in your country. If they are, we have got this outstanding warrant.” Oftentimes Immigration will just say, "well we are just going to rescind their status”, citing National Security grounds usually under the Immigration Act and just deport them back to the country, usually of their nationality if that country is the one that is seeking them. To use the precise term that may not necessarily be extradition per se. They may just deport the person or persons.

In this situation, it looks like in fact this was extradition request, did go through the courts, arrest warrants were issued by the criminal courts so this is kind of the more long-hand version of it if you will. Again the shorthand version is and I have seen this before, where basically you either see somebody who just don't get their Immigration status extended or they see it revoked and they are deported oftentimes back to their home country.