Camacho, the court appointed counsel of Wei Lin, who is scheduled to appear for his detention hearing today at the U.S. District Court for the NMI, continues to be under the custody of the U.S. Marshals.
Camacho said that should not be the case as there were some technicalities that were not followed.
“Well, President Obama, in Arizona, said you cannot use state officers to make traffic stops for example, to ask questions about immigration status or citizenship,” the attorney told the Variety.
“Mr. Lin Wei was pulled over by a Department of Public Safety state officer. His driver’s license was confiscated. He was not arrested for DUI even though there was an odor of alcohol. Nor was he given any traffic citation,” he added. “The case was quickly referred to, not the Office of the Attorney General, but rather to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.”
U.S. Assistant Attorney Kirk Schuler is prosecuting Lin.
Court papers showed Lin was pulled over for an unspecified traffic violation on Sept. 7, 2010.
Arresting officer Tarimai Joseph K. Yangetmai confiscated Lin’s CNMI driver’s license issued on June 9, 2010 but did not issue him a traffic citation.
Yangetmai asked Lin how he obtained his driver’s license and the officer was told that it came from a Bangladeshi who was paid a fee of $350.
Thereafter, Yangetmai referred the matter to DHS for further investigation.
Lin later submitted an affidavit of lost to the Bureau of Motor Vehicles declaring that his driver’s license was lost to obtain a duplicate copy of the original when in fact authorities were holding it pending the investigation.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, Special Agent Isra D. Harahap told the federal court Wei’s case was referred to him in Jan. 2011 and he found no information about his record of entry to Saipan.
But Camacho said the issue of immigration is irrelevant in Lin’s case as the arresting local police officer had no authority to ask him about his immigration status.
“We do not even know the traffic violation why Mr. Lin Wei was pulled over. We’re arguing that we should not be discussing his immigration status,” said Camacho.
This month, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the U.S. District Court of Arizona’s ruling to stop the enforcement of four provisions on the controversial Arizona immigration law, or S.B. 1070.
The appellate court’s ruling affirming Arizona District Judge Susan Bolton’s decision to block the implementation of certain provisions like requiring verification of immigration status, arrest for failure to carry immigration papers, making it illegal for an illegal immigration to solicit work, and allowing a warrantless arrest for a potentially removable alien, is a victory for the Obama administration which pushed for the lawsuit against the State of Arizona.
The CNMI, which is having problems with the implementation of the federalization law that took effect on Nov. 28, 2009, was among the parties that appealed Bolton’s decision.
The appellate court, however, said the provisions that were blocked are all pre-empted by the federal immigration law, specifically Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which says in part that state and local law enforcement officers could only enforce federal immigration law under the direction of the U.S. attorney general.
