The Superior Court yesterday denied a couple\u2019s request to temporarily stop deportation proceedings against them during the pendency of a labor case recently initiated by one of them.<\/p>\n
In denying the request of Dionisio Brana and Haydee Damasco, Associate Judge David Wiseman asserted that a labor case does not preempt the court of jurisdiction over the deportation matter.<\/p>\n
\u201cRather, if a deportation order issues pursuant to deportation proceedings, the order may be stayed pending the resolution of the Division of Labor claim,\u201d the judge clarified.<\/p>\n
In his order, Wiseman noted that Damasco filed her labor claim on Sept. 8, 2005. The Attorney General\u2019s Office initiated deportation proceedings against Brana and Damasco on Dec. 23, 2004 and Jan. 20, 2005, respectively. The judge also noted that Brana\u2019s nonresident worker\u2019s permit expired on July 1, 2001, while that of Damasco expired on Nov. 1, 2003.<\/p>\n
The judge also junked the couple\u2019s request for a hearing before the AGO for eligibility for voluntary departure in lieu of deportation proceedings, saying that the law vested the power to grant or deny a voluntary departure relief on the AGO.<\/p>\n
He said the court would not interfere with the AGO statutory responsibility, adding that the Superior Court is limited to determine whether an alien is deportable pursuant to the CNMI\u2019s immigration law.<\/p>\n
\u201c[The] respondents provided no basis other than general constitutional due process principles to convince the court that it should ignore the discretionary authority granted the AGO in deciding whether to grant voluntary departure,\u201d the judge said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHowever, [the] respondents\u2019 reliance on due process principles to challenge the AGO\u2019s discretionary authority is misplaced. Process in the form of a hearing is only provided for in determining whether [the] respondents are deportable,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
The judge noted that Brana has allegedly overstayed in the CNMI for over four years, while Damasco has been allegedly staying illegally in the Commonwealth for nearly two years. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Superior Court yesterday denied a couple\u2019s request to temporarily stop deportation proceedings against them during the pendency of a labor case recently initiated by one of them.<\/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-94720","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\/94720","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=94720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94720\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}