Former Indian top cop back in Canada after border mixup
The best you can say about Tejinder Singh Dhillon’s ordeal is that he has racked up a ton of Air Miles.
Dhillon arrived in Toronto on Thursday morning in time for his niece’s wedding, after being turned back at the Vancouver International Airport by Canada Border Service Agency officials last week and ordered to fly back to his native India.
Dhillon, a retired inspector-general of the Indian Central Reserve Police (a 300,000-strong federal force responsible for upholding law and order and fighting counter-insurgencies), thinks border officials overzealously interpreted a rule or two. After two full days of interrogation, he was declared inadmissible under Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and sent packing.
“I was shocked,” Dhillon said. “It could have been a misconception — in any system problems can happen. But it was not a pleasant thing.
“It’s the first time in my life I’ve experienced such humiliation, such disrespect.”
Dillon has been visiting Canada off and on for 30 years, visits that last no more than six or seven days, he said.
He has a visa that doesn’t expire until 2024, and had made the 19-hour journey from New Delhi to Vancouver to visit friends, before flying to Seattle then Toronto, where his niece is getting married this weekend in a two-day ceremony.
But despite producing his and his wife’s airline tickets, despite his visa, despite his offer to surrender his passport if only the CBSA would allow him to attend the wedding of his brother’s daughter, he was sent back home after two days of being grilled.
His plight was picked up by the Hindustan Times in India and what Dhillon described as a media wildfire ensued, which brought the matter to the attention of the High Commission in New Delhi.
The High Commission apologized to him and paid for an economy-class direct flight to Toronto. His dignity was restored, he said.
“I deeply appreciate the concern of the Canadian government,” Dhillon said on Thursday. “They wisely, promptly and fairly rectified things.
“I could see they were concerned for what was done and that it should not have been done.”
One of Dhillon’s friends he had planned to visit, Kwantlen Polytechnic professor Shinder Purewal, said it was shocking the way Dhillon was treated, not to mention very un-Canadian-like.
“Only once in a while do you find someone (at CBSA) who’s had a rough day,” said Purewal, a political science prof with experience in immigration law. “But you wouldn’t believe the way Tejinder was treated, the way they came across.”
For Dhillon, who has a background of training officials in the fields of policing, it was particularly galling. He does not feel the border officials who detained and interrogated him acted professionally.
Law enforcement officers “are meant to serve society, not rule society,” he said. “Customs officials have a very important role to play, preventing anything bad coming in. They have mighty powers.
“I think they need better-trained people who don’t act on hearsay.”
Dhillon said the deputy High Commissioner promised there would be an investigation, and if there is a systematic problem it will be fixed.
“The best part is this was brought to the attention of the authorities,” he said. “The political system is there to take care of problems.”
A request for comment was sent to the High Commission in New Delhi, which is 12-1/2 hours ahead of Vancouver time and therefore the middle of the night in India at publication time.