Family fighting deportation to Italy gets another shot at staying in Canada

A dual citizen of Italy and Ethiopia who brought her two Italian children to Canada more than a decade back, using aliases and falsely claiming they were Eritrean citizens subject to religious persecution, has won another chance for her family to stay here. The Refugee Protection Division, which weighs refugee claims in Canada, initially accepted the 2014 claims of Tsegereda Tsegaye Wigebral and her two kids, Nobel and Melody Esayas Fisihatsion, now 19 and 17 respectively. But it nullified their refugee status and rejected their claim in December 2022 after learning their story was fake. That same month, the family was declared inadmissible to Canada. They were ordered deported in August 2023, but applied for a pre-removal risk assessment, their last-ditch bid to stay here. Last April, a senior immigration officer “reviewed the applicants’ file and held that they were not at risk of persecution, or subject to a danger of torture, and nor did they face a risk to their lives or a cruel or unusual punishment if they were removed to Italy,” according to a recent Federal Court decision out of Ottawa. “While the applicants had alleged that they faced serious discrimination, social exclusion and abuse there, due to their race, and had alleged that they could not rely on the police or authorities for protection, the officer determined that there was not sufficient evidence before them to substantiate those claims,” wrote Justice Darren Thorne. The officer “accepted that the applicants may have been subjected to ‘less favourable treatment’ due to their race, but found they had failed to establish that this rose to the level of persecution,” said Thorne’s decision, dated June 25. “In one of the central findings, the officer noted, in relation to mistreatment in Italy, that the principal applicant had provided ‘little to no further elaboration or evidence as to how she came to the conclusion that the Italian authorities would not help her.'” The trouble is, immigration officials had asked the older child, who had turned 18, to file his own application, but the immigration officer handling their case didn’t look at what Nobel submitted before making a decision. Thorne said the immigration officer’s decision was “clearly” made without viewing the totality of the family’s applications. “The right to be heard is among the most basic aspects of procedural fairness. When a decision has clearly been made without considering all of the materials submitted by an applicant, this right has been compromised,” said Thorne, who sent the family’s case back to a different immigration officer to re-evaluate. A lawyer representing Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, who was fighting for the family’s removal, couldn’t explain why that happened, although they noted the officer may not have seen Nobel’s application. The same lawyer argued Nobel’s submissions “were immaterial, as they contained broadly the same information as had been provided by the principal applicant,” and that the information he provided “also did not establish that the treatment suffered by the applicants rose to the level of persecution, so it would not have changed the officer’s decision, even if it had been considered.” The judge did not find that argument persuasive. “This supposition is pure speculation, and no evidence was put forth in support of it,” Thorne said. “It makes little difference whether the officer had missed, disregarded or somehow failed to have personally received the second (pre-removal risk assessment) application. The point is that the decision clearly did not involve consideration of this information from the applicants.” Thorne concluded that the officer either didn’t know that there was a second application or “completely ignored” it. Either way, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada had specifically requested the information, so the officer should have addressed why Nobel’s application had been disregarded, if indeed it was dismissed purposefully. The judge noted that Nobel’s application contained more details about what his family would face in Italy that were relevant, including the racism and discrimination “that is allowed or encouraged by political leaders in Italy.” “Such evidence would seem directly pertinent to findings in the decision that the applicants had not provided elaboration or evidence in support of their beliefs that state authorities could not be relied upon for protection,” Thorne wrote. The judge didn’t buy the argument that, even if the officer had looked at Nobel’s submissions, it “would not have led to the conclusion that the malign treatment allegedly suffered by the applicants rose to the level of persecution.” “It is certainly possible that this belief is correct, and that this might well have been the determination of the officer, but it is not the role of this court to speculate on what the findings of the officer would have been, had they considered the information in the second (pre-removal risk assessment) application. It is unknowable what impact this would have had on the decision,” Thorne said.

• Quebec man convicted in Mafia-linked conspiracy deported to Italy
• Couple fleeing Mafia in Italy are now hiding from Canada's immigration officials instead

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here.