Wei Lin who made his initial court appearance last week is scheduled to appear on Thursday in federal court for his detention hearing.
According to the indictment, the 28-year-old Wei is facing two counts of knowingly possessing, obtaining, accepting and receiving a document prescribed by statute or regulation for entry into or as evidence of authorized stay or employment in the United States, that is, a CNMI driver’s license in his name with an issue date of June 9, 2010, procured through fraud.
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.
Lin was stopped for a traffic violation on Sept. 7, 2010.
The arresting officer, Tarimai Joseph K. Yangetmai, obtained from Lin a CNMI driver’s license issued on June 9, 2010.
When asked how he obtained it, Lin told Yangetmai he paid a Bangladeshi man $350.
Lin was not arrested but his driver’s license was turned over to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for further investigation.
Two days after that incident, Lin met with Homeland Security officers and told them where he obtained his driver’s license and agreed to cooperate with them.
Lin then obtained an affidavit of lost declaring that he “lost” his CNMI driver’s license to obtain a duplicate copy.
Harahap, meanwhile, continued his investigation and found out there was no record of his entry to Saipan.
“Federal and local record checks conducted by March of 2011 indicated that no one by the name of Wei Lin with his date of birth had entered the CNMI. On April 1, 2011, and in performing my duties as a federal immigration agent to verify whether Wei Lin was lawfully in the United States, I approached and made contact with Wei Lin in a public parking lot in front of a poker establishment just east of Bianca Hotel on Msgr. Guerrero Road in the village of San Jose,” Harahap said.
“I informed Wei Lin that I was a police officer. Wei Lin responded, ‘No English.’ With the assistance of a Mandarin telephonic interpreter, I presented my badge and credentials to Wei Lin and explained that I am a United States immigration officer,” he added.
When Harahap asked Lin for any identification documents, he told him he didn’t have any but the immigration officer noticed papers in his pocket and asked that they be handed to him.
One of those papers turned out to be a copy of his CNMI driver’s license.
The court appointed Joseph James Norita Camacho as Lin’s counsel.
