Fox seeks DOJ's help in reinstatement of her missionary visa

MANILA, Philippines — On the last day of her supposed stay in the Philippines, Sister Patricia Anne Fox has sought the Department of Justice for a reversal of the Bureau of Immigration’s leave order against her.

Fox, with her lawyers, filed a Petition for Review before the DOJ on Friday afternoon. They asked the Justice department to overturn the Immigration’s cancelation of her missionary visa.

Fox’s camp argued that the Immigration Board’s ground for forfeiture of her missionary visa, is not prescribed by the bureau’s Rules of Procedure. Under the said provision, “any immigrant or non-immigrant visa” may be canceled if the visa’s basis no longer exists or if the visa was acquired through fraud.

They also stressed that the Immigration failed to give Fox—who caught the ire of President Rodrigo Duterte—an opportunity to be heard.

“[N]ot only did the Order [fail] to sufficiently state which ground it is relying for the cancellation and downgrading of the respondent’s visa, it also failed to afford the respondent the procedures and processes” that were prescribed in the Omnibus Rules of Procedure, said the lawyers.

On Wednesday, the Bureau of Immigration affirmed its forfeiture of Fox’s missionary visa, over her alleged engagement in political activities in the country. Cited in particular by the Immigration Board was a photo where she was holding a placard calling for the release of all political prisoners in the country—an act that Fox argued, was part of her mission to help the poor and needy.

READ: Philippines does not want Australian nun in the country over this photo

Fox spent the last 27 years in the Philippines where she has extended assistance to several indigenous peoples, farmers and people behind jails. Humanitarian groups and the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines rallied behind Fox and said that she has been of help to Filipinos.

But the acid-tongued leader Duterte, in several of his speeches, has called the soft-spoken elderly nun as having a “shameful mouth.” He also accused Fox of treating the Philippines “like a mattress to wipe your feet.”

A weeping Fox faced the media on Thursday and said that it breaks her heart to leave the people she has helped over the years of her humanitarian work.

Immigration spokesperson Dana Mengote-Sandoval said that Fox defying the leave order would put her at risk of facing another deportation case, that could lead to blacklisting.

READ: Patricia Fox has until today to leave country — Immigration

The bureau is already processing a deportation case against Fox for her alleged violation of an Immigration Order that prohibits foreigners from joining “political partisan activities.”