No condemnation for ‘vigilante’ border agent
Ottawa silent on officer’s testimony as detainee faces deportation
The Canadian government is silent on the actions of one of its border agents who has been accused of illicitly obtaining potentially fraudulent identity documents to deport a longtime immigration detainee.
Dale Lewis, a Canada Border Services Agency officer, testified Friday to the Immigration and Refugee Board that he communicated with Gambian authorities on his personal email and WhatsApp, without explanation; may have deleted or lost some of that correspondence; relied on information from a confidential informant whose identity was known only to him; had never read CBSA’s policy on confidential informants; and generally kept very few investigative records. His evidence was often confusing and contradictory.
The CBSA said it could not comment on Lewis’s testimony.
“Where any suspicion of improper behaviour by a CBSA employee arises, it will be thoroughly investigated and acted upon accordingly,” a spokesperson for the agency said via email. “The CBSA would never knowingly remove a person from Canada using a fraudulent document or a fraudulently obtained document.”
Public Safety Minister Bill Blair, whose ministry is responsible for the CBSA, declined an interview request for this story. His spokesperson would not answer specific questions about Lewis’s testimony and instead emailed a 241-word statement that said, in part, that CBSA officers are bound by the law and the agency’s policies: “Most officers carry out their work professionally, but when an officer does not, they must be held accountable for their actions.”
The detainee’s lawyer said Lewis’s testimony is grounds for a police investigation.
“The testimony came out on Friday,” said Jared Will, who is representing Ebrahim Touré. “I would have hoped by now that the RCMP would have secured a warrant to search and seize Officer Lewis’s phone and email to make sure that those records were not destroyed because if he did a number of things that it appears he has done, that would be not only outside of the scope of his job, but also potentially criminal, and there was enough said on the record to warrant an investigation into that.”
Lewis gave the testimony in a detention review hearing for Touré, a failed refugee claimant, who is scheduled to be deported to Gambia next month. Touré, who previously spent five-and-a-half years in immigration detention, was ordered released by the quasi-judicial tribunal on Wednesday morning, in part because the presiding board member found Lewis’s evidence lacked credibility.
The CBSA is still planning to deport Touré, who will be subject to electronic monitoring as part of his release conditions. The agency wanted to keep the 49-year-old — who they have been trying to deport since 2013 — in detention pending his removal on Dec. 11.
At the hearing, held over four days by telephone conference, Will raised questions about the authenticity of the birth certificate and passport the CBSA acquired for Touré, citing irregularities in the documents themselves and Lewis’s lack of corroborating evidence for how he obtained them. Will described Lewis as a “vigilante” with a “willingness to go rogue.”
The CBSA’s representative at the hearing did not explain or defend Lewis’s actions in her closing remarks on Tuesday.
“We can infer what we want to infer from that,” Will said in an interview on Wednesday. “She didn’t think there was anything to say about it.”
In its written response to questions, the CBSA said in “rare instances” when operating in foreign countries, “officers may need to rely on personal email or other messaging applications to conduct government business.” The spokesperson could not immediately provide an example of such an instance.
Jean-Marc McCabe, the immigration board member who ordered Touré’s release, made no comment in his decision about the authenticity of the documents or how Lewis obtained them.
“It is not for me to direct how removals officers carry out their duties,” he said at one point in his decision. McCabe said determining those questions was outside his jurisdiction and beyond the scope of the hearing, which was merely to decide whether Touré should be detained while he awaits removal. Touré would have to seek a stay of removal from the Federal Court if he wanted to stop his deportation on the grounds that the documents were fake, McCabe said.
At the hearings, the CBSA provided no corroborating evidence to show how Lewis obtained the documents. Will argued that the agency breached Touré’s Charter rights by not disclosing the information, calling it “disgraceful, unlawful and unconstitutional.”
McCabe did not make a ruling on the Charter argument. He did, however, exclude Lewis’s testimony regarding what he said occurred in two interviews with Touré on Nov. 2 and 4.
The CBSA refused to disclose Lewis’s notes from the interviews and McCabe said the lack of corroboration meant Lewis’s testimony didn’t meet the tribunal’s standard for “credible and trustworthy” evidence.
Will said it was disappointing that the member didn’t explicitly condemn Lewis’s conduct or make a decision on the disclosure argument, but “all in all it’s the outcome we were hoping for.”
The CBSA’s representative at the hearing did not explain or defend the agent’s actions in her closing remarks