During the detention hearing in federal court yesterday, DHS Special Agent for Immigration, Customs and Enforcement Isra Harahap testified that he advised defendant Wei Lin to leave Saipan on April 1 but arrested him at the airport when he was about to leave for China.
Lin’s court-appointed counsel, Joseph James Norita Camacho, wouldn’t categorize the agent’s action as entrapment but said it was confusing.
“He was advised by the federal agent…that because he has no status, it was best for him to go back to China. So he purchased a ticket but when he was leaving, he was arrested,” said Camacho.
“So, we’re back here now, going through elaborate court proceedings. At the end, he would most likely be deported. So I argued that perhaps we can dispense with all of this — give him back his ticket and his passport and send him home. He indicated that he wanted to go back home,” the lawyer added.
But U.S. District Court for the NMI Designated Judge Robert C. Naraja ordered Lin to be remanded to the custody of the U.S. Marshals pending his trial.
Lin is scheduled to appear again in court on May 18 for his preliminary hearing.
U.S. Assistant Attorney Kirk Schuler conceded that Lin is not a danger to the community but is considered a flight risk so he should be kept in detention.
Lin surrendered his passport to the federal court, which presumably should have his entry date to the CNMI, which DHS said it has no record of.
Camacho said Lin appears to have first entered the CNMI in 2008 and has since stayed here.
Lin is unemployed and appears to have no ties in the local community.
It could not be immediately established how he sustained his stay on Saipan that long without a job.
Camacho said there are so many unanswered questions surrounding Lin’s case.
He said his defense that Lin was a victim of racial profiling — because he was pulled over by a local police officer and had his license confiscated without citing him for a traffic violation despite an obvious smell of alcohol consumption — will be discussed during the trial.
The attorney contends the local traffic police officer should not have acted as an immigration agent when he pulled over Lin for a traffic violation.
Lin told authorities he got his CNMI driver’s license by paying a Bangladeshi man $350.
