After being taken up by the Thai army, the workers—of whom over half were from Asian or African countries—are being evaluated to see whether they were trafficked.
In a meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping last week, Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra pledged to close the scam centers that have sprung up along the Thai-Myanmar border.
To try to dissuade scammers from using Thailand as a transit country for transferring workers and money, her administration has tightened banking and visa regulations and cut off access to fuel and electricity from the Thai side of the border.
For the past two years, some opposition MPs in Thailand have been advocating for this kind of action.
