Alleged overstayer pleads guilty, gets 6 days in prison

A Chinese tourist who allegedly overstayed in the CNMI and was found working as an illegal taxi driver on Saipan pleaded guilty yesterday in federal court and was sentenced to six days in prison. He was given credit for time served and will immediately be deported.

Xiaomei Wu, 30, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to unlawfully produce an identification document as part of a plea deal. Wu was arrested last Friday.

He was sentenced to the six days he has been in jail, placed on one year of supervised release, and required to immediately report to immigration authorities for deportation proceedings.

U.S. District Court for the NMI Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona said that if Wu is not immediately deported and is released pending further immigration proceedings, he must report to the U.S. Probation Office to begin his term of supervised release.

He was also ordered to pay a $300 fine and $100 in special assessment fee within one week after yesterday’s sentencing.

After the hearing, Wu was remanded to the custody of the U.S. Marshal for the processing of his release papers.

According to the minutes of the hearing, assistant U.S. attorney Eric O’Malley and Wu’s court appointed counsel, Robert T. Torres, both agreed to waive the filing of a presentence investigation report before proceeding with sentencing.

O’Malley recommended that Wu be sentenced to a term of time served and be made to pay a $500 fine.

Torres recommended six days of imprisonment, with credit for time served.

According to the factual basis of the plea agreement, Wu conspired and agreed with another person on May 24, 2017, to produce a false identification document in exchange for several hundred dollars worth of groceries. The other person helped him to fraudulently obtain a CNMI driver’s license by presenting a falsified U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Form I-797 as evidence of lawful status in the CNMI.

With the other individual’s assistance, Wu obtained a fraudulent CNMI driver’s license on July 1, 2017 and presented that license to a federal law enforcement last Thursday, Aug. 22.

According to Nicole Sively, special agent with Homeland Security Investigations, HSI agents checked records and discovered that Wu is a citizen of the People’s Republic of China who had overstayed his CNMI-only conditional parole.

Records showed that Wu entered the CNMI on March 3, 2017, and was granted a CNMI-only parole by U.S. Customs and Border Protection that was to last until March 11, 2017.