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6 aliens charged with improper entry plead not guilty
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Posted on Jun 15 2011
The six persons who were allegedly recruited in China and promised work in the CNMI while paroled in as tourists, all pleaded not guilty to the charge of improper entry in federal court yesterday.
Zhongjun Yu, Cuilan Ma, Chungping Li, Lifei Bian, Shoujun Yin, and Zhipeng Ren, were remanded to the Department of Corrections.
U.S. District Court for the NMI judge Alex R. Munson found the defendants to be potential flight risks as determined by the U.S. Probation Office.
Munson set the jury trial for Aug. 15, 2011.
Attorney Joseph James Norita Camacho, court-appointed counsel for Yu, told Saipan Tribune that maybe the U.S. Homeland Security should invest its time and resources investigating persons who have no status and do not want to voluntarily leave the CNMI.
“I am not trying to trivialize this case but it seem a little bit silly for the Department of Homeland Security to charge someone with improper entry when that person is at the airport ready to exit the CNMI,” Camacho said.
Assistant U.S. attorney Beverly McCallum appeared for the U.S. government at the hearing.
According to the charging information, on May 30, 2011, the six Chinese nationals entered the CNMI by telling an immigration officer at the Francisco Ada-Saipan International Airport that they were coming to the Commonwealth as tourists and not to work, when in fact, they intended to work.
