Lawyer grills border agent in man’s deportation hearing
Questions raised about veracity of Toure IDs, officer’s use of email
Ebrahim Toure is scheduled to be deported to Gambia next month.
It would mark the end to a years-long saga for the 49-yearold, who has spent more than five years in immigration detention.
On Friday, however, Toure’s lawyer suggested that the Canada Border Services Agency may have obtained a fraudulent passport and birth certificate in order to deport him.
Speaking at an Immigration and Refugee Board hearing — conducted by phone — Jared Will raised questions about the authenticity of the documents and how they were obtained. He cited irregularities in how the documents appear to have been issued and questioned the CBSA officer’s lack of documentation, unregulated reliance on confidential informants and inexplicable use of his personal email address to communicate with Gambian immigration officials.
Specifically, Will pointed to how the date of Toure’s recently issued birth certificate was apparently extracted from the Gambian birth registry two days before the birth itself was registered, while the passport was issued one day before the birth was registered.
Under Gambian law a birth must first be registered before a passport can be issued.
Dale Lewis, the CBSA removals officer on Toure’s case, testified that he believed the documents to be valid.
Will asked if the “metaphysical impossibility” of how the documents are dated gave Lewis any pause.
The presiding board member, Jean-Marc McCabe, who acts as a kind of judge of the hearing, interrupted.
“I don’t understand the question. Do you understand it, Mr. Lewis?”
Will, sounding impatient, rephrased his question: “The fact that the birth certificate could not have been issued in the way that it purports to be issued, does that not give you a concern about its authenticity?”
The representative of the minister of public safety — who acts as a kind of prosecutor — objected before Lewis could answer.
McCabe had previously warned Will that it was not for this hearing to decide whether the documents were authentic and he should avoid going “down the rabbit hole.”
The purpose of Friday’s hearing was to determine whether Toure, who was the subject of a 2017 Star investigation into Canada’s immigration detention system, should continue to be detained until his deportation on Dec. 11.
A failed refugee claimant, Toure was previously detained from February 2013 until September 2018 because the CBSA believed he would not show up for his deportation if they could ever arrange it. He spent most of that time — four-and-a-half years — in a maximum-security provincial jail because the CBSA classified him as a “highrisk” detainee based on a 2005 conviction for selling pirated DVDs in Atlanta, an offence for which he served no jail time.
Toure was released a little more than two years ago when the CBSA admitted it did not know when it would be able to deport him.
But in January of this year, while Lewis was in Gambia on a matter unrelated to Toure, he said he and another CBSA official met Gambian immigration authorities and convinced them to look into Toure’s case. Neither he nor his colleague made any notes from the meeting.
Lewis subsequently received a package in August via DHL Express from Gambia that included Toure’s passport, birth certificate and a copy of a photograph of two women the CBSA says are Toure’s mother and sister. Lewis said nothing else was in the package.
“Nothing else?” Will asked. “No cover letter, no note?” “Nope, nothing.” Lewis said the package was mailed from Gambia, but he couldn’t remember and had no documentation of who was identified as the sender.
In the course of questioning, Lewis said he had been communicating with Gambian immigration officials via WhatsApp and his personal email, not his CBSA email.
When Will asked why Lewis didn’t give Gambian officials his CBSA email, Lewis initially evaded.
“I’m asking you for the third time,” Will said. “Why?”
“For convenience, so that I wouldn’t miss any of their transmissions.”
“Do you miss transmissions on your work email?” Will asked.
“No, but since the pandemic I’ve only been in the office, maybe, very few days.”
“Mr. Lewis, the pandemic started two months after you provided them with your personal email.”
After 12 seconds of silence, Will said that if Lewis had no explanation for why he used his personal email he should just say so. “But if you do have an explanation I’d like to hear it.”
Lewis said he simply made the decision to use WhatsApp.
“Mr. Lewis, again, WhatsApp is not an email program,” Will said.
Later, Will asked Lewis if he deleted his correspondence with Gambian officials.
“I have deleted some,” Lewis said, “… and I lost my whole WhatsApp in September of 2020 when my phone got destroyed with water and I got a new phone.”
At another point in the hearing Will asked Lewis if he was “authorized to communicate with foreign authorities on your personal email and your personal WhatsApp.”
“I have no idea,” Lewis said. “That’s how I chose to deal with them.”
Will also asked Lewis about information about Toure he said he obtained from a confidential informant. Lewis said he was the only person who knew the informant’s identity.
“So the CBSA allows you to work with confidential informants without even telling the agency who those people are?” Will asked. “Yes,” Lewis said. “And it allows you to receive information from those confidential informants and tender it in a legal proceeding without even telling the CBSA who those informants are?”
Lewis said he deals with confidential informants all the time. “Some call me anonymously, I don’t even know who they are, and they provide me information.”
Will asked if the CBSA had a policy on the use of confidential informants. Lewis said the agency did, but he was not familiar with it.
“So you’re testifying that the CBSA has a policy on the use of confidential informants, you’re using a confidential informant, but you’re not aware of the contents of the policy on confidential informants, is that your evidence?” Lewis agreed. In the midst of Lewis’s testimony, the minister’s representative abruptly asked the hearing to be adjourned until Monday.
The Star sent the CBSA several questions about Lewis’s testimony on Friday, but a spokesperson said the agency needed more time and would respond next week.
Toure, whose wife is expecting their first child four days after he is scheduled to be deported, was re-detained last week after the CBSA said he did not disclose a change of address. They believe he is unlikely to appear for his deportation if they release him.