Grandfather in border brouhaha
Former police officer battling to get his NEXUS card back
Call it a small victory against bureaucratic overreach.
And while Gunwant Sodhi may not have his NEXUS card back, he has at least won a chance to appeal the decision by Canada Border Services Agency to take it away.
After representing himself and losing, Sodhi, 65, hired Niagara immigration lawyer Lisa WinterCard to seek a judicial review of the decision to deny his appeal.
The review met with success, but Winter-Card originally tried to dissuade Sodhi. She told him it wasn’t worth it.
“I always tell clients that NEXUS isn’t a right,” she said. “I’m a refugee lawyer. I deal with life-anddeath situations. The idea that you can’t get across the border as quickly as you like isn’t high on my radar.
“I asked him why he couldn’t just use the regular border like everyone else.
“He said it was about the principle of the thing. He is a former police officer. He has never had any negative interaction with any authority, and they were basically calling him a liar.”
The NEXUS card is issued jointly by CBSA and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. It is a program designed for pre-approved, low-risk travellers who frequently cross the border.
Sodhi’s problems began on Aug. 17, 2016, at the Whirlpool Bridge into Canada.
The U.S. citizen of Indian origin had picked his daughter, sonin-law and grandson from JFK Airport in New York after they returned from a trip to India. They then visited with Sodhi at his home in Niagara Falls, N.Y., for a few days.
When his daughter and her family returned to their home to Fort Erie, they discovered her husband had left his medication pouch behind. It contained pills to control diabetes and high blood pressure.
Bright and early the next morning at 7, Sodhi drove to the border and, using his NEXUS card, told the guard he was in a rush to deliver the prescribed medication.
Things went sideways from there. A CSBA officer detained Sodhi for four hours in secondary inspection and officers seized his son-in-law’s medication. They also revoked Sodhi’s NEXUS card.
What followed was a two-year odyssey to get it back.
“In retrospect, it makes sense to him now that you can’t take someone else’s prescription medication across the border — but in the moment, he wasn’t trying to break the law,” Winter-Card said. “He wasn’t misrepresenting himself. When asked for more information, he gave it.”
The judge awarded Sodhi $1,400 in costs and Winter-Card said he will re-launch his appeal.
The border guard at the initial inspection noted that Sodhi declared he was bringing “stuff” to his daughter. Sodhi denies that. He insists he told the guard precisely what he was doing — returning his son-in-law’s medication.
The same guard conducted the secondary examination and said it was only then that Sodhi told him he was bringing the prescription medication over the border.
The guard informed Sodhi that he had contravened food and drug regulations by bringing medication that wasn’t his across the border. That was the reason for the NEXUS membership cancellation, CBSA maintained.
Winter-Card said the only way CBSA can revoke his card, in this case, is if Sodhi had violated the Customs Act — and there was no evidence of that in this case. She also added that guards have a “great deal of discretion” in dealing with these situations.
“I’m not sure why they didn’t just send him home,” she said.
I asked him why he couldn’t just use the regular border like everyone else? He said it was about the principle of the thing .... They were basically calling him a liar.” Lisa Winter-Card, immigration lawyer