Ryan Jespersen:

…talk on immigration, perhaps not in many years has talk and policy conversations and then the real life issues on immigration been so contentious, so emotional. We’re gonna talk about kids in detention centers in the United States, we’re gonna talk about kids in detention centers in Canada with our next guest, an immigration lawyer.

But first, we want to key up this remarkable story involving the border separating Canada and the US. It’s a border that we’ve been proud of, isn’t it? Relatively speaking uncontrolled … Relatively speaking, open border. The longest of its kind in the world. It’s been shared by neighbors, but don’t let that lead you to believe that you can cross wherever and whenever you like.

That’s what Cedella Roman figured out, the 19-year-old French citizen when she went jogging right around May long weekend. Victoria Day long weekend, visiting her mom who lives in North Delta, British Columbia. She was jogging by White Rock, beautiful coastline, obviously outside Vancouver. She was jogging in the evening, because, well it had been hot out, and she didn’t want to run in the beating sun. She was running along the beach, and then she saw a trail. The trail elevated, as we understand, and she thought there might be an opportunity to snap a photo, maybe a sunset photo, so she jogged and jogged and jogged until she was intercepted. She was intercepted by US Customs and Border Protection officers that approached her and informed her that she had crossed the border illegally. That’s when she was taken into custody. Here’s Cedella Roman’s testimony firsthand.

Cedella Roman:

I didn’t realize what happened to me, because I said like “Oh My God!” I was just running. I did three steps more, nothing more, and he tell me like, you could be, deported to your country, to your home country France. And you will go to detention, center of detention. I said, “Oh my God it’s not possible. I can’t believe that.” American official was okay. They were not too mean with me. Just like it was complicated to ask some questions to ask some questions with them, because other time when you want to ask something in the center of detention … other times they said, “I’m not here, I don’t know your case, so I can’t answer you because I am here for the security, I am here for the medical. So you can’t talk with them. So, you have to wait for your case.

Ryan Jespersen:

And wait she did. On May 22nd, the day after she was arrested, Cedela Roman was taken to ICE’s northwest detention center in Tacoma, Washington about 140 miles, lets call it 200 km, south of the border point where she’d been arrested. She remained detained until June 5th. From May 22nd to June 5th. After two weeks of paperwork, she was driven back north and, so-called, removed to Canada. Quite a remarkable story as we welcome in Raj Sharma, an immigration lawyer and partner with Stewart Sharma Hasanyi Immigration Law. Thanks for joining us.

Raj Sharma:

Good morning, Ryan.

Ryan Jespersen:

Is a story like this common? Is the only unusual part here that she went to the media, the media found out and she was willing to tell her story, or is this quite unusual as far as you can tell?

Raj Sharma:

Well it’s not unusual. The fact of the matter is that borders matter in 2018. And I don’t think there’s any such thing as an open border anymore. The issue here of course is that she’s a French national, she’s not a Canadian citizen, and so that probably threw a wrench in the plans to remove her, or deport her quickly back to Canada. Obviously, U.S. authorities had to check with our own CBSA to determine whether we would take her back. I would assume that deporting her to France would have been easier, but she probably wanted to get back to her mom in B.C.

Ryan Jespersen:

Officials speaking on behalf of I.C.E., or Immigration and Customs Enforcement, did confirm, Raj, what you suggested, that her status as a French citizen, would have led to more of a delay, a longer processing time for her case, then would have a Canadian citizen. When it comes to Canadians illegally crossing the border into the United States, what would be the scenario there, what would be the reality, what would be the implications?

Raj Sharma:

Well, I think there’s two realities. There’s a pre 2001 reality. So, the pre 2001 reality was indeed neighbors without a fence for example, between us and our southern neighbor. And then of course, you have Ahmed Ressam, the so called Millennium Bomber, who got sentenced to 37 years for attempting to carry out a terrorist attack. And so, post 9/11 we have a quite a different world. Now you have very little scope for discretion.

I was a refugee protection officer just after 9/11 with the Immigration and Refugee Board, and you saw this sort of decrease in this bonhomie and this sort of discretion where you would have … and many of have had stories of entering the U.S. with just a driver’s license, for example. Those days are essentially gone.

Let’s remember this French jogger … again, I don’t know whether she was distracted, whether there was some selfies going on, or simply just jogging, but she had no identification on her, near an international border. So, perhaps things are different in France, because it’s part of the E.U., and those borders are quite open. But, for Canadians I think this concept of open borders is long gone, and all Canadians should carry identification and the appropriate identification when they are entering the U.S. or even close to that border for example.

Ryan Jespersen:

Raj, obviously we know that everything changed following 9/11 in 2001 as you alluded to … What about everything since November 8th 2016 when 45 won the election, when Donald Trump became President, how drastically … From your perspective as an immigration lawyer, how different is the Canadian-American relationship and all the nuanced details there, since Donald Trump became President. What are you seeing?

Raj Sharma:

Well I think it’s been a sea change. It’s been a watershed sort of moment in terms of Immigration Law and policy for Canada. We really are playing defense at this time. We’ve had the luxury for decades of being able to pick our immigrants. My father came to Canada after Pierre Trudeau’s changes to the immigration system which prioritized objective criteria. We saw a shift away from European centric immigration to Asian centric immigration. Immigrant’s have been welcome and there’s been positive feelings associated with immigrants and newcomers in Canada precisely because we’ve been able to pick our newcomers.

Part of that reason is that the U.S. is kind of like Jupiter. It has this massive gravitational pull. It pulls, these sort of non-regular, irregular sort of migrants towards its own orbit. And now what we see with number 45, as you put it, now what we see is that that gravitational pull has certainly weakened. It might even be repelling individuals away. And so now you see a phenomenon that we have not seen before, which is for example, close to 50,000 border-crossers last year. A number projected somewhere between 90,000 plus this year. So, we now have irregular border-crossers that we’ve never had in these types of numbers.

I remember some 15 years ago there were so few they didn’t even keep statistics for it. So now we have massive border-crossers. We now have the U.S. Supreme Court upholding Trump’s Muslim ban. We have, now the detention of migrants and families and children in the U.S., and of course, very heated rhetoric by the U.S., principally targeted towards its southern neighbor, but, of course, some sniping to Canada on trade more recently.

Ryan Jespersen:

Raj, I want to make sure I’m understanding correctly what you just said. Are you suggesting that we have 50,000 people illegally crossing from Canada into the U.S. every year?

Raj Sharma:

No, into Canada because of the rhetoric by the U.S. in my opinion. I think it’s adding to it. We have the U.S. canceling temporary protected status for nationals of Haiti, of El Salvador, of many other countries. And so those nationals that have been in the U.S. for many years are now between a rock and a hard place. There TPS status is up in about a little over a year, close to a year and half from now. And they’re going to face return to either very dangerous countries or undeveloped countries, or they’re going to start looking north and thinking about crossing the border into Canada and trying their luck here. That is a direct result of the U.S. … of the Trump presidency.

Ryan Jespersen:

Immigration lawyer, Raj Sharma, our guest. This crackdown … The American crackdown … The Trump administration’s … certainly prompted some critics, and it seems to be more and more by the week, to call for a scrapping or a suspension of this Canada-U.S. safe third country agreement. Suggesting the United States is no longer a hospital destination for refugee claimants. Can you provide some insight into this and what you think the right decision might be?

Raj Sharma:

Sure, the Safe Third Country Agreement or the STC is something that we asked for. So, after 2001, when the U.s. started cracking down on at that point, open border, we went to the U.S. and we asked for the Safe Third Country Agreement. We asked for the Safe Third Country Agreement because we thought quite rightly, that there would be tens of thousands of individuals that would cross into Canada, for example, with the U.S. crackdown that happened shortly after 2001, for example. You had little Pakistan in Brooklyn just empty out for example. So, this is something that we asked for. And there was … the premise was that we had analogous risk determination systems. 

That premise may not be true anymore. So the STC prevents individuals … so if you’re in the U.S. we expect you to make a claim in the U.S., and you’re precluded from making a refugee claim at the port of entry. And if you’re in Canada, the same applies to you. You are expected to make a claim here and not go into the U.S. So, one of the so-called loopholes of the Safe Third Country Agreement is that it doesn’t apply to people that make a in-Canada or inland refugee claim. So what individuals do is they simply skirt or go around the port of entry, and then make a refugee claim even five feet or ten feet within Canada, and then they can proceed with that claim.

Now, if you scrap the Safe Third Country Agreement all these individuals have to do is instead of jumping a ditch or attempting a unauthorized crossing, they can now go to a port of entry and file their paperwork directly with an immigration officer instead of taking risks, for example, crossing near Emerson or in Manitoba with minus 40 degrees celsius.

Ryan Jespersen:

When we return with Raj Sharma, our guest and immigration lawyer partner with Stewart Sharma Harsanyi, we’re going to ask him about last Wednesday, it was World Refugee Day, and a representative of the University of Toronto, along with a representative of the University of Ottawa, presented on World Refugee Dat, at a gathering in Montreal, Canada’s so-called score card. Everyone is talking about the detention of children these days. Everybody’s focusing on Texas and the southern U.S., but there are kids behind bars in Canada. And the score card is a failing one. Like we didn’t even get 50%. N we’re going to get Raj’s take on that when we return.

We opened this hour with a conversation of this French citizen that unwittingly crossed into the United States while jogging, near White Rock. How about this story from Brad Ferguson, a friend of this show texts in and says, “I was in San Diego at the Hotel Coronado. I got up early to go for a run on the beach. Sun was just rising, so I didn’t actually see a sign that I was supposed to see.” Says, “10 minutes later this big 6’8 just jacked guy pulls up beside me and starts jogging beside me for a while. And then he asks, ‘Well, may I ask where we’re going?’.” Brad says, “I didn’t respond. He all of a sudden pulls in front of me and stops me and says, ‘This is the property of the United States Navy Seals. The first line of amphibian defense of the United States Navy’.” Brad says, “He asked me for i.d., I had nothing on me. And then he escorted me back to my hotel interrogating me the entire way. I had to produce my passport, before he let me go.” It’s a hell of a story Brad.

Our guest is Raj Sharma, an immigration lawyer and we want to turn our attention to a report that was delivered a score card as a matter of fact, last Wednesday, Montreal World Refugee Day, where Canada scored 49%, 49 out of 100, that puts us around the middle of the rankings with other countries. Pointing out that while it may seem like paradise in Canada if we contrast the situation for families seeking asylum to the reality in the United States, but we’ve still got a long way to go. Raj, you wanna T this up for us? For a lot of Canadians its been a bit of a surprise as there’s been a lot of attention paid to our southern neighbors. The fact that we’re not 100% completely innocent when it comes to keeping children in custody.

Raj Sharma:

Well Ryan, that is correct. … Right now we have about 150 children in detention right now. But, I think it’s important to sort of contrast our approach to the U.S., I mean we think it’s sort of an analogous system, but we don’t detain children en masse, we don’t have family separation en masse, …our system is trying to deal with these sort of unique outlier type of situations. So, there’s approximately three … there’s two or three detention facilities that house children … Typically, you will see children with their mothers, with fathers having access for example. So, the situation of children being behind bars in Canada would be very, very rare. So, direct detention, would be, if a minor is, for example, a risk to the public, which again, is unlikely. Or there’s unclear identity. So, in that scenario we should not be detaining children behind bars because there’s issues as to their identity. I believe very, very strongly that alternatives exist to, for example, within the community.

Now, the far more likely scenario is that you have a situation where a family is facing removal, and there are concerns that the family will not show up for removal. And in that case, these individuals … these children are housed with their mothers at these, sort of, medium security facilities. What Jason Kenny once called former three star hotels. Albeit those three star hotels have razor wire and fencing around them.

Ryan Jespersen:

I wanna ask you to comment on what’s going on down in the united States. I think there might be some value in playing this report because we’re seeing how everyday citizens are stepping up on the US southern border with Mexico to offer assistance. Here’s a report filed just moments ago by Jim Ryan:

Jim Ryan:

[inaudible 00:16:40] hospital scrubs Pediatrician Dr. Aaron Bodansky takes the bullhorn at a demonstration in Mcallen Texas, but not to lead a chant.

Dr. Bodansky:

I’m here for completely apolitical reasons.

Jim Ryan:

His concern is about the medical care offered to children who have been separated from their parents at the border.

Dr. Bodansky:

Especially when we know that once their released their quite sick.

Jim Ryan:

One government official who’s visited a holding facility for immigrant kids tells ABC News that he saw some nurses, but no physicians. Bodansky says he has a list of 120 pediatricians who’ve offered their services. Jim Ryan, ABC News. Along the U.S.- Mexico border.

Ryan Jespersen:

Raj, I wanna just ask this generally to allow you to provide as open an observation as you like, or to focus in on whatever details you like. What do you make of what’s going on, on that border?

Raj Sharma:

Well, what we have is of course, the basic breakdown of countries. You have state breakdown beyond what we could even imagine here in Canada. In Honduras, In El Salvador, these countries have the highest homicide rate in the world. It’s probably more dangerous to live in Honduras than it is in countries that are wracked by civil war, civil strife. So, you have unbelievable hardship, and you have unbelievable risk, and that’s what’s happened in Central America.

So, if you look at the number of the demographics, the southern border … if individuals think that Mexico is the issue, there’s a massive drop in border crossings by Mexicans to the U.S. due to the declining birth rate in Mexico. Mexico’s economy is doing better, and frankly the uptick or the surge, a quarter plus, 25% plus is Central American individuals and families. And so, you really can’t solve a sort of problem that’s growing geometrically with arithmetic. To solve, or get at the root of this issue you’ll have to deal with these sort of push factors out of Honduras and Central America. And that can be done by nation building.

And again, if resources are put there … and again, we did this in Haiti as well, albeit unsuccessfully, or perhaps it was incomplete or inadequate, but I think resources have to be put there to deal with this phenomenon that’s going on.

Ryan Jespersen:

Raj, I have just one minute left with you before we’ll break for the headlines. Were you surprised at the Supreme Court down in the United States, the ruling today … the 5-4 opinion that essentially upholds the President’s travel ban, were you surprised?

Raj Sharma:

No I wasn’t. I think the U.S. Supreme Court, unlike Canada’s, is far more split on partisan lines. And the Republicans on that bench, or those individuals appointed by Republicans now have the majority, so I wasn’t too surprised. And perhaps it’s defensible I suppose in terms of the legal principles and vote, but I think this will only embolden Mr. Trump in future policies that will target specific groups and religions.

Ryan Jespersen:

Raj, we’ve really appreciated your time here and look forward to connecting with you again. Thanks for this.

Raj Sharma:

My pleasure. Thank you.

Ryan Jespersen:

Raj Sharma’s an immigration lawyer, a partner with Stewart Sharma Harsanyi. We’ll get into that ruling in just a moment, Thanks for your time Raj.

Raj Sharma:

You got it. Take care.