THE House Subcommittee on Labor and Immigration has informed Attorney General Robert T. Torres that H.B. 13-49, or the Illegal Detection and Apprehension Amendments of 2002, did not come from the House of Representatives but was drafted by one of the lawyers of the Attorney General’s Office.
Torres declined to comment on the matter when asked by the Variety on Friday.
Subcommittee Chairman Herman T. Palacios, in a two-page letter, told Torres that there was a “need to clarify the issues and circumstances surrounding the bill.”
Torres in an earlier letter to Palacios, R-Saipan, said the bill “may not survive constitutional scrutiny” in its current form.
The bill intends to provide stricter enforcement measures for the Department of Labor and Immigration so that DOLI officers will have the power to conduct a limited number of investigations and searches without obtaining search warrants.
Palacios said the bill was introduced upon the request of AGO lawyers.
“It was jointly prepared by two of your staff attorneys and certain high-ranking officials from Labor and Immigration,” Palacios told Torres.
He said the subcommittee proceeded to introduce the measure and requested the drafters of the bill and DOLI officials for a meeting last Jan. 25 at the department office. Torres was represented by Assistant Attorneys General Harold Pickering and James Benedetto, Palacios said.
He said Pickering and Benedetto assured the committee that the prepared draft “would muster constitutional scrutiny.”
But Torres in his letter to Palacios said the bill “may infringe on the commonwealth and the United States’ Fourth Amendment right to be free from unlawful search and seizure.”
While the subcommittee is concerned about the proliferation of illegal aliens and wants to address this problem, Palacios said “it is equally concerned about the issues of the draft legislation.”
