Toronto teens facing deportation get last-minute reprieve

TORONTO – Redwan and Shuruvi Mozumder, Toronto siblings who were scheduled to be deported from Canada Monday, have earned a last minute reprieve. The Canada Border Services Agency informed the pair Sunday night that their removal, planned for 9 a.m., had been cancelled, said their lawyer, Richard Wazana.

The decision came after a weekend of intense lobbying by the Mozumders’ MP, Liberal Nathaniel Erskine-Smith. After the siblings lost a last-ditch court appeal Friday, ErskineSmith appealed directly to the office of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Minister Marco Mendicino.

“I made the case that the kids, through no fault of their own, were suffering because of the conduct of the mother, and we should treat them separately,” Erskine-Smith said Monday. “The kids have lived their entire teenage lives here in Canada. We shouldn’t deport them to the United States.”

Redwan and Shuruvi, now 19 and 18 years old respectively, came to Canada in 2013 from Dhaka, Bangladesh. Once in the country, their father abandoned the family, and their mother, Sabina Sharin Nipa, applied for refugee status on their behalf. The Immigration and Refugee Board, however, denied that application and an appeal in 2014, in part because Nipa, had, by her own admission, lied to the board and presented it with false documents.

The board also found the Mozumders weren’t refugees because, as U.S. citizens, they could simply go to the U.S. if they weren’t safe in Bangladesh.

For years after that ruling, though, nothing happened. The Mozumders adapted to Canada. They began to think of themselves as Canadian. Until the last year, they had little idea they were any different from anyone else in their new polyglot hometown.

“I honestly didn’t know what being a refugee was, what being an immigrant was, what being a citizen was,” said Shuruvi. “I was just like, ‘what does that mean?’ I had no idea.”