Sablan said with a few exceptions in and around urban areas of the country, U.S. attorneys and U.S. Marshals are required to live in the jurisdictions they are appointed to.
He said the only non-urban exception is that the U.S. attorney and Marshal for the Northern Marianas do not have to reside here.
This effectively allows for the U.S. attorney general to appoint a single U.S. attorney and U.S. Marshal to be assigned to Guam and the NMI, Sablan said.
“And this is the situation we have now, in which the U.S. attorney resides on Guam and there is a satellite U.S. Attorney’s office in the Northern Marianas. I think that as part of our continuing political maturity — exemplified by our new seat in the U.S. Congress and the recent confirmation of one of our own to the federal court here — it is time that we had our own U.S. attorney and U.S. Marshal.”
Sablan said his H.R. 2822 will also help insure that cases involving federal law are brought to trial and that no one need feel that the enforcement of federal law is something decided and done from afar.
