Manglona denies FSM citizen’s motion to reinstate court’s stay of his removal

U.S. District Court for the NMI Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona has denied a citizen of the Federated States of Micronesia’s emergency motion to reinstate the court’s stay of his removal from the CNMI.

In her order Saturday, Manglona said the court does not have jurisdiction to hear Mariano Angel Shiano’s petition for habeas corpus—as she had already explained in a previous decision.

“It therefore has no jurisdiction to issue a stay of removal,” Manglona said in her two-page order.

According to court records, Shiano is a habitual offender.

The judge said the court has issued a final order and decision so any further remedy must be pursued through an appeal.

Shiano, through counsel Stephen C. Woodruff, filed the emergency motion in court on Friday after being told by his client on Monday last week that he had been told that he would be removed that very day.

Woodruff said he had his administrative assistant call Immigration and Customs Enforcement to verify this and was told by an ICE officer that Shiano was scheduled to be put on a plane next week.

Woodruff said on Friday morning (Sept. 16) he was again indirectly notified that Shiano would be removed that day. Further inquiries, he said, showed that Shiano had been checked out of the Department of Corrections on Saipan by ICE that Friday morning.

Ultimately, Woodruff learned from an ICE official that Shiano is no longer on Saipan and has been transferred to immigration detention in Guam.

Absent a stay petition, he said that Shiano will almost certainly be put on one of the flights from Guam to Chuuk.

ICE official Gerald Zedde and ICE acting supervisor Beth Limerick both opposed the emergency motion.

Last Sept. 7, Chief Judge Manglona granted ICE’s motion to dismiss Shiano’s petition for habeas corpus. The judge lifted the court’s temporary stay order that temporarily stopped Shiano’s deportation.

Shiano was originally scheduled to be deported on July 5, 2011, but he filed a petition for habeas corpus.

In the petition, Woodruff argued that Shiano has no criminal history subsequent to the May 8, 2008, enactment of the Consolidated Natural Resources Act or the Nov. 28, 2009, extension of the territorial reach of the Immigration and Naturalization Act to include the CNMI.