Attorney Stephen Woodruff submitted in federal court a motion for leave to file the plaintiffs’ brief and exhibits out of time in support of their motion for preliminary injunction.
The plaintiffs are seeking three reliefs:
• Enjoin U.S. Department of Homeland Security for 180 days from treating any alien lawfully present in the CNMI pursuant to CNMI law on Nov. 27, 2009 as lacking “admitted or paroled” status that is removable under the Immigration Nationality Act, or otherwise unlawfully present in the United States.
• Enjoin DHS for 180 days from treating any alien who are authorized employment in the CNMI pursuant to CNMI law on Nov. 27, 2009 as not being authorized for employment.
• Enjoin U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (and DHS generally) for 180 days from enforcing the Nov. 27, 2011 cut-off for CW petitions on behalf of aliens currently present in the CNMI to qualify for continuing stay and employment authorization.
Woodruff said his clients “likely will succeed on the merits,” adding, “the final rule is both substantively and procedurally defective.”
“On behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated,” Gerardo De Guzman, Hector Sevilla, Carlito Marquez, Bonifacio Sagana, Eduardo Elenzano, Jong Ho Lee, and Manuel Vilaga have asked the federal court to declare the CW final rule as “unconstitutional.”
The plaintiffs are long-time guest workers. Some have U.S. citizen children, and include small-scale business entrepreneurs and a U.S. citizen.
Named as defendants were U.S. Department of Homeland Secretary Janet Napolitano, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director David Gulick, U.S. Department of Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, and U.S. Department of Labor District Director Terrence Trotter.
Woodruff said the “plaintiffs will suffer irreparable harm in the absence of an injunction.”
He said his clients and “others similarly situated have already been suffering irreparable harm” since DHS published and implemented the CW final rule, “leaving a mere 81 days for the public to even know that rule says (or more precisely, to try to educate themselves) and only 51 days to prepare and support petitions for many thousands of alien workers whose ‘grandfathered’ status from two years ago will evaporate on Nov. 28, 2011.”
Woodruff said “the balance of hardships tips sharply toward plaintiffs,” adding a “preliminary injunction is in the public interest.”
Woodruff opened his arguments with a quotation from President Obama that “[H]ope is not blind optimism.”
“Despite the disappointments and frustrations over the past two years with the performance of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in implementation and application of…the Consolidated Natural Resources Act of 2008…[the] plaintiffs, who have supported and continue to support extension of U.S. immigration law to the [CNMI], nonetheless still hope for a systematic, orderly, reasonable, just and realistic integration of the CNMI into the immigration regime of the United States, with a minimum disruption to the lives, interests, and economic activities of the people of the commonwealth, and come to this honorable court seeking a remedy to that end,” Woodruff stated in his motion.
