The Arrest Warrant

The Law Offices of White & Hart are located in Bangkok, Thailand. White & Hart specialize in United States Immigration and legal matters arising in the area of American criminal defense law. In an increasingly global economy the fact is that law enforcement is becoming a global organization. This means that those with an arrest warrant in the United States can be taken into custody in countries such as Singapore, Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand, the Philippines, Myanmar (Burma), Laos, Vietnam, Hong Kong, China Kore, or Japan and extradited to the USA. Countries such as Thailand have already announced that they will be connecting to the United States Criminal warrant database in an effort to “cast a wider net” in the search for international criminals. This use of American warrant information is to be most widely utilized by Thai Immigration officials. This increasingly seems to be the trend in most Asian nations.

This state of affairs can have a tremendous impact upon those with pending criminal matters in the USA, of all degrees of seriousness. Few are aware that officials at American Citizen Services Sections of US Consulates at American Embassies around the globe are instructed to confiscate United States Passports belonging to those who have outstanding warrants in any of the jurisdictions under the authority of the United States. In situations such as this, an American Citizen can be effectively stranded in a foreign country with no way of traveling and, in some cases, with no documentation to prove their identity. Many are forced to deal with the matter without proper legal advice as they are deported from the foreign country or placed in extradition proceedings which can be very complicated and could ultimately lead to forcible removal to the United States.

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