The court has determined that Congress’s two-year reprieve (following the imposition of US immigration law on the CNMI) protected immigrants in the CNMI from removability on the basis that they had not been admitted or paroled into the United States, but did not exempt them from removal based on other grounds of removability set forth in the INA, such as being an applicant for admission who was not in possession of a valid entry document. In addition, because residence in the CNMI prior to the imposition of US immigration laws cannot be used toward the residence requirement for naturalization, it also cannot be used for the continuous physical presence requirement for cancellation of removal for non-lawful permanent residents.
The full text of Torres v. Barr can be found here:
http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2019/06/12/13-70653.pdf