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6 aliens charged with improper entry plead guilty, get time served sentence
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Posted on Jun 27 2011
Six persons who were allegedly recruited in China and promised work in the CNMI while pretending to come in as tourists entered guilty pleas in federal court last week.
Zhongjun Yu, Cuilan Ma, Chungping Li, Lifei Bian, Shoujun Yin, and Zhipeng Ren each pleaded guilty to one count of improper entry as part of a plea deal with the U.S. government.
U.S. District Court for the NMI judge A. Wallace Tashima sentenced the six to time served and ordered that they be turned over to an immigration official for deportation. He ordered the immediate release of the defendants.
Attorney Joseph Norita Camacho, counsel for Yu, told Saipan Tribune yesterday that Yu is thankful to the Department of Homeland Security for expediting this case and for recommending a sentence of time served of only a few days so he can return to China and be with his family.
“As a poor man from China, Yu is especially thankful for waiving all fines, including the $10 assessment fee,” Camacho said.
The defendants, who are all Chinese nationals, arrived in the CNMI on May 30, 2011, by commercial airline from China with the intention of finding work.
When they arrived at the Saipan International Airport, they told immigration authorities, however, that they were tourists and were allowed in. The six then began looking for work in the Commonwealth.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement special agent Isra D. Harahap, they began investigation on May 27, 2011, when a cooperating source informed him and a Homeland Security Investigations agent that a Chinese national named Ms. Honglian Cheng had been communicating with the source about bringing in several Chinese nationals to work in the CNMI.
ICE agents recently arrested Cheng and Li Hua, who were subsequently charged in federal court. Cheng was allegedly responsible for bringing the six defendants to Saipan, while Hua was the one who recruited them in China.
