The case of 24-year-old Abdoul Abdi’s possible deportation by Canadian authorities has again put the spotlight on Canada’s commitment to human rights.
Abdoul Abdi was recently released from prison after spending four years for several convictions, which included aggravated assault. He was heading to a halfway house where the process of his reintegration to the society was to start when he was rearrested by Canada Border Services Agency officers at the jail gates for not possessing Canadian citizenship. He has since been placed in immigration detention.
Abdi was born to a Somali mother in Saudi Arabia, and later spent four years in a refugee camp in Djibouti before landing in Canada at the age of six with his sister and two aunts.
Abdi was taken by child-protection services by age seven after which he became a permanent ward of the state. He was not adopted and spent years shuffling between 31 placements while “in care,” mostly in group homes.
CPS Failed To File For Citizenship
Although Abdi ‘s aunt became a Canadian, she could not apply for his citizenship as she was no longer his legal guardian. His legal parent, child-protection services never did apply on his behalf despite him eligible.
As a result of being an illegal migrant with a criminal record, Abdi is now facing deportation to Somalia, which is one of the most dangerous countries on Earth and where he has no family or connections.
Fatouma Abdi’s his sister questioned Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at a recent town hall meeting as to why he wasn’t stopping the deportation of her brother.
Trudeau admitted that the “care system failed your brother,” adding that Canada’s immigration system is “based on rules and principles but that it is also compassionate and reflects on individual cases.”
Similarity To Warsame Case
Abdi’s case is similar to another young man’s who had been deported in 2012 by the previous Conservative government, according to Samer Muscati director of the International Human Rights Program at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law, and Audrey Macklin chair of IHRP’s Faculty Advisory Committee and the director of the Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies.
Jama Warsame was also born in Saudi Arabia and inherited his mother’s Somali citizenship. He also came to Canada as a young child, and similar to Abdi had been convicted of criminal offences involving violence.
Both the young men:
- had never lived in Somalia prior to arriving in Canada
- don’t any family left in Somalia and
- cannot speak a Somali language.
In 2011, the International Human Rights Program at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law and refugee lawyers filed a filed a complaint on Warsame’s behalf with the United Nations Human Rights Committee.
UN Committee Found Canada To Be In Breach of Its Obligations
The UN committee held that Canada’s deportation of Warsame would be in violation of the legal obligations that Canada voluntarily undertook with its ratification of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Somalia is considered so dangerous that Canada bars its officials from travelling there.
The UN Human Rights Committee noted that, without language skills and no support from family or clan, Warsame may be rendered homeless and become vulnerable to various human-rights abuses.
Several members of the Committee also found that his deportation may breach his right to remain in his “own country.”
Although Warsame did not possess Canadian citizenship, according to the majority of the UN committee, Warsame belonged to Canada , in all functional respects, as a result of his strong ties to the country including presence of his family, the language and duration of his stay.
Keeping these aspects in mind, the UN committee found that deporting Warsame would violate Canada’s international legal obligations.
Notwithstanding this, the Conservative government led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper deported him in March 2012.
According to Muscati and Macklin, if Prime Minister Trudeau truly believes in the rule of law and the principle of compassion then, Abdi should not be deported. The main issue is not if Abdi is “a model member of the Canadian community” and so “deserves”‘ to stay but that he is already a “product and member of this society”.
