THE District Court for the NMI on Tuesday granted Angel Paras Cruz Jr.’s motion to reschedule his trial.
Cruz, who runs Villa De Cruz Apartelle and World Electric & Construction Co. Inc., is charged with eight counts of visa fraud and five counts of fraud in foreign labor contracting charges.
According to the indictment, on Dec. 21, 2022; Aug. 9, 2023; Nov. 8, 2023; and Jan. 31, 2024, Cruz “did knowingly subscribe as true under penalty of perjury under 28 U.S.C. § 1746, a false statement with respect to a material fact in an application, affidavit, and document required by the immigration laws and regulations prescribed thereunder, to wit: a United States Citizenship and Immigration Services Form I-129CW. Specifically, in each instance…Defendant certified his company would pay foreign workers according to CNMI and Federal laws, as well as the terms and conditions of the employment contracts submitted with the Form I-129CW, when in truth, Defendant did not intend to pay the workers for all the work they performed and/or pay them overtime compensation for any work performed over 40 hours.”
Cruz also made a false statement in a Department of Labor ETA Form 9142C, the indictment stated.
In her order on Tuesday, District Court for the NMI Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona stated that “for good cause shown in [defendant’s] motion to continue trial, and without objection from the [U.S.] government, the Court hereby continues the trial in this matter from July 22, 2025 to September 3, 2025 at 10 a.m.”
The court finds that “the ends of justice served by granting this continuance outweigh the best interests of the public and the Defendant in a speedy trial, and therefore excludes time from the filing of the motion, June 2, 2024, until the new jury trial date under the Speedy Trial Act in order to permit defense counsel ‘the reasonable time necessary for effective preparation, taking into account the exercise of due diligence.’ ”
The court further ordered that the deadline for filing any pretrial motions is extended to June 6, 2025, and the deadline for filing any motions in limine is extended to August 1, 2025.
A motion in limine is a request made to the court, usually before a trial begins, asking the judge to rule on whether certain evidence or arguments should be excluded (or sometimes included) during the trial.
