By Jun Ramirez
Bureau of Immigration (BI) Commissioner Jaime Morente on Monday welcomed the appointment of the agency's two executives to fill posts vacated by Marc Red Mariñas, who recently resigned to run for mayor of Muntinlupa City.
Bureau of Immigration Commissioner Jaime Morente
(Ali Vicoy / MANILA BULLETIN)
Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra named lawyer Ronaldo Ledesma, former BI OIC Commissioner and currently training director, as BI OIC Deputy Commissioner, while Grifton Medina, the BI's personnel chief, as acting chief of the port operations division (POD).
They shall, however, continue to discharge their current duties in a concurrent capacity.
“The men and women of the BI are grateful to Secretary Guevarra for choosing Atty. Ledesma and Mr. Medina, whose competence and integrity cannot be assailed, for these two important and sensitive positions in the bureau,” Morente said.
A product of the Ateneo law school and acknowledged as a leading authority in Philippine Immigration laws who authored several books on the subject, Ledesma has been with the BI since the time of the late Commissioner Miriam Santiago.
In 2010, he was named officer-in-charge of the bureau, a post he held until 2011.
A senior immigration officer, Medina headed the personnel section since January 2016, and chairs the bureau’s committee on good governance.
Medina holds a master of law degree, major in international law, which he acquired from Whittier College in California. He was also a professor at the Lyceum of the Philippines University from 2011 to 2016.
Morente said that with Ledesma as a member of the BI board of commissioners and Medina’s stewardship of the POD, “the BI is on the right path to attaining our goal of transforming the bureau into a proud, modern, and efficient agency of government.”