THE Department of Labor and Immigration deported 613 alien workers from 1992 to 1997, based on documents submitted to the U.S. Department of the Interior.
About one-third of the deportations occurred in 1996, the same year that arrest warrants were required before suspected illegal aliens could be arrested.
Statistics on deported aliens from 1998 to 2001 were not available at the CNMI Archives—the main depository of public documents.
DOLI is among the government agencies that do not strictly comply with the Open Government Act, the archives said.
In 1996, 189 arrest warrants were issued but 203 were recorded deported.
In 1997, 96 arrest warrants were issued by authorities which resulted in 52 deportation cases.
During the five-year period, 291 were deported to China and an equal number were sent back to the Philippines. Thirty-one deportees were foreign workers of various nationalities.
In terms of voluntary departures, 8,212 foreign workers voluntarily left the islands from 1990 to 1996, according to the Federal-CNMI Initiative on Labor, Immigration and Law Enforcement in the CNMI Third Annual Report.
