Canadian Border Services Agency lacks oversight, but that’s only part of the problem
Canadian Border Services Agency lacks oversight, but that’s only part of the problem
By VICKY MOCHAMA StarMetro Columnist
A Canadian citizen spent eight months in immigration detention. The reason? Agents of the Canadian Border Services Agency “alleged his prints matched those of a fraudulent refugee claimant who was deported to Nigeria in the 1990s,” the Guardian first reported.
In June 2016, Olajide Ogunye provided citizenship papers and an Ontario health card to agents outside his Toronto home. Ogunye has been a Canadian citizen since 1996.
He was nonetheless eventually detained at both Central East and Maplehurst prisons — medium- to maximum-security jails. He is now suing the federal government for $10 million dollars.
His experience is a horrifying one. A key benefit of citizenship is protection from having said citizenship revoked without due process. A federal court affirmed last year that citizenship, once gained, is a right that cannot be easily or quickly stripped away. CBSA agents and immigration officials should not have been able deprive a citizen of liberty with as much ease as they did in Ogunye’s case.
And yet they were able to. This episode exemplifies the failures and fissures of the immigration system, especially the immigration detention process, that need to be addressed.