A farmer, who ended up as a freelance illegal taxi driver on Saipan after he was allegedly recruited in China and entered the CNMI last year as a tourist, pleaded guilty Wednesday in federal court to a charge of improper entry.<\/p>\n
Jun Yang, 34, was arrested last week. He immediately signed a plea agreement with the U.S. government.<\/p>\n
U.S. District Court for the NMI Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona sentenced Yang to a term of imprisonment of time served and ordered him to pay $10 in special assessment fee.<\/p>\n
Yang was directed to report yesterday to the U.S. Homeland Security Investigations, Enforcement and Removal Operations Office.<\/p>\n
Yang\u2019s court-appointed counsel, Colin Thompson, had recommended a sentence of time served. Assistant U.S. attorney Garth Backe recommended the same. Both agreed not to recommend probation or supervised release. <\/p>\n
Yang has claimed he lost his passport.<\/p>\n
According to the information, on May 4, 2017, when asked by a Customs and Border Protection officer at the Francisco Ada\/Saipan International Airport why he had come to the U.S., Yang lied that he had come for tourism purposes when, in fact, he had come to work.<\/p>\n
Yang was caught by authorities during a routine traffic stop outside the Marina Heights II Building in Puerto Rico last Sept. 26.<\/p>\n
Yang admitted to entering the CNMI as a tourist on May 4, 2017, with the intention of working on Saipan.<\/p>\n
Yang allegedly paid a person named Brother Qiang in China 35,000 RMB or $5,000 on a promise of a job on Saipan.<\/p>\n
Yang said Qiang accompanied him during his arrival on Saipan, but that Qiang never showed up at his hotel room.<\/p>\n
He said he only had $200 cash when he landed on the island.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A farmer, who ended up as a freelance illegal taxi driver on Saipan after he…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[169,26,3936,22884],"class_list":["post-286039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-china","tag-cnmi","tag-garth-backe","tag-jun-yang"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286039"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286039\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}