Asylum seekers are seeking a temporary restraining order preventing the U.S. and CNMI governments from deporting them and all other persons who filed asylum applications.
The 22 asylum petitioners, through attorney Bruce Jorgensen, asked the U.S. District Court to compel the federal and CNMI governments to submit a proposed set of rules consistent with their obligations regarding refugee/asylum/torture protections.
Jorgensen said given the U.S. and the CNMI’s “long-standing pattern and practice of inaction” since the receipt of then Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner Doris Meissner’s May 1998 letter, and given the threat of irreparable harm this poses to his clients and others similarly situated, “the time is now ripe for the court to provide remedies to clarify and implement refugee/asylum/torture protection policies and procedures.”
Jorgensen said the defendants can no longer “sit on the sidelines pointing their fingers at each other.”
“Rather than exercising their fiduciary duties to protect CNMI-situated refugee/asylum/torture protection-seekers, defendants have consistently done just the opposite,” he said in the motion for TRO and preliminary injunction.
Jorgensen asked the court to order the U.S. and the CNMI to cease their alleged unlawful conduct before his clients “and similarly situated others are further harmed.”
But Assistant Attorney General Andrew Clayton argued that the case is not a class action lawsuit and therefore the plaintiffs lack standing to request a TRO on behalf of non-parties.
Clayton, in his opposition to the motion, also objected to the addition of an unnamed plaintiff in the case.
Clayton said the new plaintiff was added without notifying the court or the opposing parties.
The plaintiffs have failed to show that there is a need for a TRO in order to prevent them from being deported, Clayton said.
For 22 of the 23 plaintiffs, this is not an issue since the CNMI agreed in Sept. 1999 that it would not deport any of the plaintiffs to this case, Clayton said.
The asylum seekers have included U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, U.S. Attorney General John Aschroft, and Attorney General Robert T. Torres as defendants in their 5th amended complaint filed in federal court.
Jorgensen told Variety on Tuesday that Powell, Aschroft, Torres, and Labor and Immigration Secretary Joaquin A. Tenorio were being sued in their official capacities.
Jorgensen said the CNMI government, through Torres and Tenorio, and in apparent tandem with the U.S. government and or Powell, Aschcroft and other defendants, have continued to deport CNMI-situated persons despite the fact that they have submitted requests for asylum/refugee/torture protections.
