Another defendant got a nine-month jail sentence, while the two other defendants were placed on one-year supervised release after the court credited their 13-day time served at the Department of Corrections facility.
On June 8, 2010, defendants Lihua Yi, Pingping Zhang, both females, and Zhanshan Zhang, and Shixu Huang, both males, were found guilty of a single felony count of conspiracy to defraud the United States.
The fourth defendant changed his plea, and testified against Huang and the other defendants.
After hearing oral arguments from both parties yesterday, visiting Nevada Judge Philip M. Pro sentenced Lihua Yi and Pingping Zhang to the 13 days they had already served, and placed them on one-year supervised release.
Zhanshan Zhang got a nine-month jail term, and one year of supervised release. He was remanded to the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service after the hearing.
Shixu Huang got a 12-month jail term and two years of supervised release. He will report to the U.S. Marshals Service on Monday.
Shixu Huang could get “educational and rehabilitation” initiatives from his incarceration on the mainland, Judge Pro said.
The defendants were represented by court-appointed attorneys Bruce Berline, Mark Hanson, Anthony Long, and Michael Dotts.
In an e-mail, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kirk Schuler, the prosecutor, said: “The government is pleased that the four defendants were sentenced today to bring closure to this case in the district court, and also pleased that the sentences imposed make a statement that sneaking into Guam will not be excused and will be punished.”
Assisted by a translator, Shixu Huang, described by the prosecution as the “ring leader” or “leader of the pack,” apologized to the court for including other defendants in his plan to seek asylum on Guam.
A teary-eyed Shixu Huang said he was “tortured,” “jailed” and sent to a “mental hospital” in China.
In an e-mail to the Variety, Dotts said his client, Shixu Huang, was involved in the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989.
Shixu Huang took pictures and witnessed the shooting of students by Chinese troops and was identified by the Chinese government as a “counter-revolutionary.” He was then sent to prison for two years, according to Dotts.
When Huang got out of prison, he gave an interview to French and German reporters about being imprisoned after the Tiananmen Square crackdown.
As a result, Dotts said Huang was arrested again for giving the interview and this time imprisoned for four years and sentenced to hard labor. “The conditions he was held under violated human rights. They amounted to torture,” the lawyer said.
After Huang was released the second time, Dotts said his client continued to be harassed by Chinese government police and officials and was arrested and imprisoned two more times.
“He decided to try to get out of China and to America and seek political asylum. He saw that the commonwealth was part of the United States and managed to get here,” Dotts said.
Huang arrived on Saipan in April 2008. But once he got here he learned he could not seek asylum in the CNMI.
“Mr. Huang struggled on Saipan. He does not speak English and found it hard to find work. In China he had been a photographer. He only found limited opportunities for that work here,” Dotts said.
When the federal government took control of local immigration on Nov. 27, 2009, Dotts said Huang learned that he would be “in limbo as to his immigration status for perhaps the next five years as the United States figured out what to do with individuals like Mr. Huang in the commonwealth.”
The lawyer added: “Mr. Huang also learned that if he could just set one foot on Guam he could seek asylum there. The morning of Jan. 28, 2010, Mr. Huang with four friends set out in two rubber rafts to go from Rota to Guam so that they could seek asylum. Mr. Huang and the others were arrested in the port on Rota. Mr. Huang was arrested before his boat [could leave] the dock.”
According to Dotts, “Judge Pro also recommended that Mr. Huang serve his time on the mainland where he may be able to legally change his immigration status. This was a very fair sentence. Mr. Huang will do time in prison for breaking the law. At the same time by directing that the sentence be served on the mainland it is a humane sentence that recognizes that this is not a normal case and that Mr. Huang is not the usual sort of criminal.”
Therefore, the lawyer said, “under these circumstances, Mr. Huang thanks Judge Pro and the United States criminal justice system for doing justice in his case.”
Dotts said “it is very dangerous to travel by raft or small boat from Rota to Guam. Nobody should try it, no matter how desperate they become to seek asylum. Plus, if they do try, they are likely to be arrested at the dock just like Mr. Huang.”
