Previous Story
No contempt case vs. Zachares, Goldberg
|
Posted on Sep 25 2000
Labor and Immigration Sec. Mark Zachares, Assistant Attorney General Robert Goldberg and federal immigration officer Robert Stamerra are not in contempt of the court for interviewing two Chinese nationals seeking asylum in the CNMI.
This was the ruling of U.S. District Judge Alex R. Munson after he heard arguments last week on the motion filed by lawyer Bruce L. Jorgensen on behalf of the two asylum seekers.
The judge also ruled Mr. Zachares and Mr. Goldberg did not engage in bad faith litigation stemming from the incident that occurred in January of this year.
Mr. Jorgensen contended that the three violated an earlier order by the federal court to maintain the status quo on the case when Mr. Stamerra interviewed Liao Da Nian and attempted to question Rui Liang while under CNMI’s detention.
He claimed this was against the order since they did not inform him of what they were trying to do.
But Judge Munson said there was no evidence there was a breach of the status and that it did not show Mr. Stamerra knew of the court’s order.
“[E]ven if Mr. Stamerra was aware.., the ‘status quo’ language was too unspecific to adequately put Mr. Stamerra, a non-party, on notice that his conduct violated the… order,” he said in his ruling issued last Friday.
“Nor did the evidence show that the contacts between Mr. Stamerra and Messrs. Goldberg and Zachares and other CNMI employees who facilitated [the] interviews with the plaintiffs constituted a breach of the status quo or amounted to bad faith litigation,” he added.
The latest ruling was part of the long-drawn civil case where both the U.S. and CNMI governments have been named defendants, along with 25 other individuals. The plaintiffs have sought a court order so that their asylum applications will be processed.
The defendants have claimed in court papers that they have no authority to accept the asylum petition because the CNMI has its own immigration laws that do not cover such procedures.
