Ukrainian family wins 11th hour stay of deportation
CBSA decision ‘not a full victory’: lawyer
• Vladyslav Zadorozhnyi, 15, the suicidal boy Canada planned to deport to Ukraine despite a psychiatrist’s warning it would trigger another attempt, has been spared at the 11h hour.
A stay of deportation for him, his mother Maryna Zadorozhna, 34, stepfather Andriy Ryabinin, 45, and brother Andriy, 7, appears to have been ordered on Friday afternoon from the cabinet level, likely by Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale, who oversees the Canada Border Services Agency, though a spokesman would not confirm this.
It followed a panicked day of legal manoeuvring on behalf of a family whose refugee claim about extortion by gangsters and crooked police in their home city of Kharkov was rejected last year. That prompted a depression in Vladyslav, who is also diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder, brought on by a childhood rife with fears of kidnapping and violence, a psychiatrist said.
A deportation order issued in June led to an overdose of prescription drugs on his last day of school, hospitalizing him for a week until his heart activity normalized. He said in an interview he lives in terror of being sent back.
On Friday morning, CBSA denied the family’s request to defer deportation on medical and compassionate grounds. It found they offered “insufficient evidence” that they would suffer “undeserved or disproportionate hardship.”
That meant they would be deported as scheduled on Saturday, escorted by two officers and a nurse for Vladyslav.
Despite the family’s pleas that mental health care in Ukraine is especially poor, a CBSA officer concluded Ukraine would be “better” for Vladyslav.
“I note that as the family has currently no status in Canada and is not eligible f or healthcare coverage and has no funds to pay for their treatment, therefore it may be a better option for Vladyslav Zadorozhnyi to return to Ukraine and receive treatment, where he has a status and the treatment is available to him,” reads a letter signed by Inland Enforcement Officer D. Sliwka.
That opinion contradicts the advice of Nuha AlShammari, a psychiatrist in the crisis unit of Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children, who said deportation was likely to trigger another suicide attempt.
Soon after CBSA’s denial, around midday, the family’s Liberal MP, James Maloney of Etobicoke- Lakeshore in Toronto, escalated the case to the cabinet level, his spokesperson said, and made a “strong representation on behalf of the family” to both Goodale and John McCallum, the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship.
Meanwhile, a Federal Court judge in Ottawa was holding a l ate- afternoon time slot to hear the family’s last ditch plea for mercy. But later in the afternoon, counsel for the CBSA announced a stay had been granted, and the court hearing was cancelled.
“It’s not a full victory. It’s a big interim victory,” said Jane Katkova- Brown, co- counsel to the family. It gives them a chance to pur- sue Vladyslav’s backlogged application to stay in Canada for humanitarian and compassionate reasons.
The elder Andriy Ryabinin will remain in detention as a flight risk, at least until he can arrange bail if it is granted.
He is also psychologically vulnerable, according to a medical report.
“He was literally wailing, especially when he started to tell me about the persecution he experienced in Ukraine and his fear of being returned.
“In this case, he and his family are doomed. He has good reasons to expect that they will kill him ,” psychiatrist Felix Yaroshevsky wrote. “He needs support. I hope that he will be successful in seeking refugee status, which may give him some relief in terms of the very traumatic situation he was, and is, in.”
Ryabinin operated three clothing stores, two restaurants and a magazine in Kharkov, Ukraine’s secondlargest city.
In December an IRB off i cer believed his claim that he was the victim of a “swindle” in 2011, and an arson in 2014, but decided the “allegation of a current conspiracy of criminals and government officials extorting him using a threat of death or harm to his family is not supported by credible evidence.”
Vladyslav, Maryna and the younger Andriy also spent five days in a cell last week because border agents feared they would try to escape.
Scott Bardsley, a spokesman for Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale, who oversees CBSA, said t he minister has “exceptional” powers over the deportations of failed refugee claimants, and exercises them in collaboration with McCallum with an eye to humanitarian and compassionate concerns in cases that might have otherwise slipped through the cracks.
But he cautioned that sometimes the public claims of people facing deportation are inaccurate or incomplete, and the government is barred by privacy legislation from correcting them.