US govt: Guanlao will not suffer harm

The U.S. government argues that Amalia Abo Guanlao will not suffer irreparable injury without a stay of an order for the dismissal of her lawsuit pending her appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Adrienne Zack, a lawyer for the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Division, pointed out that Guanlao won’t be separated from her family; Guanlao herself states that her family would return with her to the Philippines.

In the U.S. government’s opposition to motion to stay pending appeal, Zack said Guanlao also does not allege economic hardship if she were to return to the Philippines.

Nor would her medical needs suffer if she were to return to the Philippines. Indeed, Zack said, Guanlao has previously indicated that she needs to return to the Philippines for medical care.

Zack said Guanlao has a valid order of removal and it is in the public interest to allow that order to take effect.

She said this case presents the narrow question of whether petitioner received ineffective assistance of counsel such that she was prevented from filing a justiciable petition for review in 2015.

A determination of this question does not have CNMI-wide implications on “nonresident worker’s due process rights,” Zack said, contrary to the argument raised by Guanlao’s counsel, Rosemond Santos.

Guanlao is a Filipino mother of two minor U.S. children who has been fighting a 2013 immigration court’s order for her removal.

Guanlao, through Santos, has asserted that whatever the decision the District Court reached in her case will be an important ruling on a question affecting nonresident worker’s due process rights.

Santos said Guanlao’s case presents a unique challenge between clear violations of due process and the immigration administrative process requirements.

Guanlao is appealing to the Ninth Circuit that seeks to reverse the District Court’s ruling that dismissed her petition for a writ of habeas corpus. The petition seeks to appeal the immigration’s removal order.

Santos is moving the District Court to grant Guanlao’s motion for stay of the ordered dismissal of her petition and the lifting of the stay of removal, pending an appeal of the final order to the Ninth Circuit.

Guanlao first moved to Saipan in April 1994 and has been in the CNMI for the past 24 years. She married her husband (also a nonresident worker) in December 2000. Together they have children, ages 12 and 15 years old, who were both born in the CNMI and are U.S. citizens.