Fugitive Rebar Group chairman Wang You-theng (王又曾) is scheduled to make his first appearance before a US immigration judge on Tuesday at the beginning of what many observers expect to be a lengthy procedure in his bid to avoid repatriation to Taiwan to face embezzlement and other charges.
US immigration authorities have set a preliminary court appearance for Wang on Feb. 13 at 8am in the San Pedro detention facility south of Los Angeles, where he has been held since being interdicted on his attempted entry into the US last Friday.
The hearing will be preliminary in nature, and will deal largely with housekeeping items, according to Elaine Komis, a spokesman for the Executive Office of Immigration Review, which is handling the case.
In the hearing, called a master calendar hearing, the judge will discuss the charges, whether Wang needs legal representation, whether Wang wants to seek relief from deportation and similar issues.
"It's the first meeting with the judge and preliminary discussions. The merits of the case are discussed later in an individual hearing," Komis said.
In some cases, a decision on whether or not to deport an alien is made at the first hearing, but not in most instances, she said.
The US' case will be presented by a prosecutor from the Department of Homeland Security, which includes the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency that is detaining Wang.
Provide briefs
While Taiwanese authorities will not have a separate role in the proceedings, they can provide briefs and other material to the court through the prosecution, Komis said.
Meanwhile, Mainland Affairs Council Chairman Joseph Wu (
In his talks with US officials and others, "the sense I got is it might not be as optimistic as we want, because the United States is a country that strictly adheres to the legal system and legal procedures," which can be lengthy, he told the Taipei Times.
Taiwan's desire for a fast return for Wang was "not a realistic assessment of the real situation. If the case becomes legally entangled, Taiwan must wait for the results," Wu said. "I don't think this is going to proceed in an easy fashion."
Wu expressed some hope that ongoing cross-strait efforts to convince China to deport fleeing criminals may eventually bear fruit. Those contacts involve academics from both sides at conferences in which Taiwan seeks "to let the Chinese side understand the depth of the issues," and the anger of the Taiwanese people over China's refusal to turn over criminals.
"I think they have a much better understanding right now because of the Wang case, opinion surveys and news clips from Taiwan," he added.
More conferences
There may be more such conferences between academics and perhaps semi-governmental officials to find a better way to deal with the issue, Wu said.
He also called on cooperation from China based on the 1993 cross-strait meeting between Taiwan's Strait Exchange Foundation chairman Koo Chen-fu (
Asked whether China seemed willing to help, he said, "not at this point. But in recent contacts, they seem to be getting a much better understanding of the situation."
Meanwhile, in Taipei, the Taiwan Association of University Professors staged a protest outside the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) yesterday, asking the US to repatriate Wang. The AIT reiterated that since the Wang case was an ongoing legal matter the AIT therefore had no comment. There were a number of minor scuffles between police and protesters as the association did not apply for permission in advance of its protest.
Additional reporting by Jewel Huang
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater