US immigration authorities in California asked an immigration court on Friday to reverse its decision to free fugitive Rebar founder Wang You-theng (
Wang was released from a Los Angeles immigration detention center on Aug. 7 after spending six months behind bars as US and Taiwanese authorities sought a way to legally deny his entry into the US and have him returned to Taiwan to face justice.
He was released after a Board of Immigration Appeal (BIA) judge ruled that the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency had wrongly arrested him.
"We filed a motion to reconsider today," said Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for the ICE office in Los Angeles.
"We're asking the Board to reconsider its previous ruling and to assign a three-member panel to review the case. The appeal was filed this morning," she said.
"The basis of our filing was simply that we believe that the original immigration judge's finding that Wang was not an arriving alien and the board's ruling supporting that finding arose from a factual error and we've asked the board to seat a panel to reconsider the decision," Kice said.
Wang, who fled Taiwan through China last year and arrived in the US in January, was admitted on a valid Taiwan passport and US visa. After he arrived, however, Taiwan revoked his passport, invalidating his visa.
In early February, he attempted to leave the US, apparently to slip out of the grasp of the US and Taiwanese authorities pursuing his case. While trying to get to Myanmar, he was refused transit entry in Singapore at Taiwan's request and was put on the first plane back to Los Angeles, where he was arrested by ICE on his return as an illegal alien.
On Mar. 28, an immigration court judge ruled against the ICE, saying that Wang had never left the US since he had not been admitted to another country. On August 3, the Board upheld that ruling and Wang was released four days later.
"Our position is that he is, under law, an arriving alien and that's why we filed this motion," Kice said. "We believe that the original immigration judge and the original member of the BIA who reviewed this case and found that he was not an arriving alien, that their ruling is in error."
Pending the ICE motion to reconsider, Wang remained under close observation by the ICE to prevent him from fleeing again.
"We're continuing to monitor him while this legal process plays out," although he will remain free in the interim, Kice said.
She could not say how long it would take the board to assign the panel or for the panel to make its decision, but the ICE has asked for expedited proceedings.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,