The Division of Immigration will have five less persons to track down, after one of the 159 former garment workers who remain unlawfully in the CNMI after the settlement of their class action suit at the U.S. District Court stepped forward for voluntary repatriation. The four others were found to have pending cases at the Department of Labor hearing office.<\/p>\n
Immigration director Antonio Sablan described the one garment worker who surrendered before the July 15 deadline as a female Chinese national.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe is the smart one. We are now processing her for voluntary repatriation. We\u2019re making sure that her travel documents are in order, and that repatriation funding is available for her,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The four others, he added, have filed cases with the Labor hearing office after their applications to transfer to new employers were denied.<\/p>\n
The Attorney General\u2019s Office, he added, has already processed arrest warrants against the 154 other persons on the list.<\/p>\n
But Sablan stressed that the immigration division \u201cis not treating this as a manhunt.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is just something that we are directing some of our efforts to, but it\u2019s basically the same as what we do on a daily basis. It\u2019s just that we\u2019re obligated under law to do this,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He added that due process will be guaranteed for all the former garment workers who will be caught and arrested.<\/p>\n
Although the initial count released by the AGO as to deportable members of the garment class action suit was 440, attorney general Pam Brown later said that an extensive double check reduced the actual number to only 159. She said some of the workers have gained lawful immigration status.<\/p>\n
The remaining unaccounted for workers face arrest and deportation proceedings in court, warned Brown, who said that illegal aliens cost the government assets and revenues that are utilized to apprehend and deport them. She stressed, however, that the workers would be accorded due process.<\/p>\n
Brown also emphasized that she has the discretion whether or not to grant reprieve to workers who would still voluntarily turn themselves in to authorities instead of being arrested.<\/p>\n
The wanted aliens failed to obtain valid immigration status despite numerous opportunities provided them by the Labor Department, the AGO said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Division of Immigration will have five less persons to track down, after one of the 159 former garment workers who remain unlawfully in the CNMI after the settlement of their class action suit at the U.S. District Court stepped forward for voluntary repatriation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82755","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82755\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}