‘Enough is enough. I’m not a criminal’

Immigration detainee held for 5 1/2 years denied release again for ‘lacking in credibility’

Ebrahim Toure thought this time would be different.

After five-and-a-half years in immigration detention, the 47-year-old failed refugee claimant believed he and his lawyers had convinced the Immigration and Refugee Board to finally release him.

This week, following his 67th hearing before the quasi-judicial tribunal, he was once again denied.

“I don’t know how long this thing is going to go on,” Toure said Wednesday in a phone interview from the Immigration Holding Centre. “Almost six years they’ve taken my freedom out of my hands. Enough is enough. I’m not a criminal.”

Toure, who is believed to be from The Gambia, has been detained by Canada Border Services Agency since February 2013 because the government has been unable to deport him and immigration authorities believe he will not show up for his deportation if they can ever arrange it.

They have not been able to arrange it because Toure does not have any identity documents — he says he’s never had any — and The Gambia has thus far refused to issue him any.

The Canadian government accuses Toure — who is not charged or convicted of a crime and not considered a danger to the public — of not cooperating with its efforts to remove him, but he says he has given them all the information he has and is willing to be deported.

Toure thought this was his best chance at release in months. He had multiple sureties and believed his lawyer had made a strong case.

The last time he was this hopeful was in the fall when his lawyers took the government to Superior Court alleging his indefinite detention violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Justice Alfred O’Marra ruled the government still had a right to detain Toure largely on the basis of what government lawyers described as a “pending” interview with Gambian authorities that O’Marra said could potentially lead to a “breakthrough” in the case.

Nine months later, the interview has yet to occur and remains unscheduled.

Toure, who spent the first four-and-a-half years of his detention in maximum-security jail, insists he is cooperating. At the CBSA’s request he has signed applications for Gambian travel documents, he says. He has also provided the CBSA with his fingerprints and DNA and brought forward people from within Toronto’s West African community to vouch for him. “I don’t know what they want from me.”

He says he is willing to comply with any release conditions the CBSA imposes on him. “If they want me to report every day I’ll report every day. I’ll wear an ankle bracelet.”

Describing Toure as “seriously lacking in credibility,” presiding board member Harry Adamidis wrote that Toure “cannot be trusted” to show up for his deportation if the government can ever arrange it. Adamidis agreed with the CBSA’s allegation that Toure is thwarting their efforts, saying the agency has “done everything which can reasonably be expected of them.”

The board and the CBSA point to the fact that Toure once insisted he was from Guinea, not The Gambia. Earlier this year he was, for the first time, asked to fill out a family information form, in which he wrote that his mother may have been born in Senegal. He had never mentioned this before, but he had never been asked. The CBSA has cited this as an example of Toure attempting to “muddy the waters” of his removal.

In interviews with the Star and submissions to the board, Toure, who is illiterate and has no formal education, has said his nationality is complicated due to the transient nature of his upbringing. He says he is not sure where he was born, but it was likely in The Gambia. He spent much of his childhood and adolescence in Guinea, where he believes his father was born, but he traveled back and forth between the two countries regularly. His parents are both dead.

In his decision, Adamidis concedes that despite CBSA’s efforts “little has been achieved” and there is “no clear path to securing a travel document.” He said there is no way to estimate how long it will take to deport Toure and the “legal validity” of his detention is “strained.”

“Under these circumstances, continued detention amounts to warehousing Mr. Toure until some ‘breakthrough’ occurs. This is untenable.”

Adamidis still ordered Toure’s continued detention.

Toure’s lawyers had presented a release plan that included four bondspeople, who together put forward a combined $20,000 to ensure Toure’s compliance with whatever release conditions might be imposed. Adamidis rejected the plan due to what he said were “untruthful statements” by the primary bondsperson about his relationship with Toure. Specifically, Adamidis took issue with the fact that the bondsperson, who is 15 years older than Toure, claimed that they met when they were teenagers in The Gambia.

“If the panel cannot trust in the main pillar of this release plan, then it must be rejected,” Adamidis wrote in his decision.

A recent audit of immigration detention reviews for longterm detainees, released Friday, identified systemic problems with how Immigration Division board members conduct detention reviews.

The audit cited a lack of procedural fairness for detainees, a culture of unquestioning deference to the CBSA, a sloppy and inconsistent approach to fact finding, and a system that is generally stacked against detainees.

In response to the audit’s findings a group of 50 lawyers called for the mass resignation of Immigration Division board members, who preside over immigration detention reviews. The Immigration and Refugee Board’s new chairperson, Richard Wex, who was just appointed this week, has directed his staff to review the cases of detainees who have been held for more than a year.

Toure says he has not been able to sleep, and he can’t stop thinking about how long he might be detained.

“When’s this thing going to be over?” he said.