Feds Must Answer for Security Lapse Involving 469 Missing Foreign Criminals: Tory MP

Conservative MP Raquel Dancho, chair of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, speaks at a committee meeting in Ottawa on Aug. 16, 2022. (The Canadian Press/Adrian Wyld)

The federal government must address how 469 foreign criminals facing deportation, including those convicted of multiple sexual offences, have gone missing, says Conservative public safety critic Raquel Dancho.

“The Minister of Public Safety needs to explain to Canadians how and why they allowed multiple violent offenders who were serving sentences for murder and sexual offences to be knowingly released into our communities,” Dancho said on Twitter on Oct. 15 after the news first broke in the Globe and Mail.

According to the Globe, the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) stated that “as of December 1, 2021, there are 48,486 foreign nationals subject to enforceable removal orders.”

“Of these 29,719 are individuals whose whereabouts are unknown,” the agency said, adding that 469 of them “had removal orders issued against them for criminality or criminal convictions in Canada.”

Among the 469 foreign nationals, some were convicted of multiple sexual offences, some have been pursued so long that their arrest warrants have expired, and around 30 were found guilty of serious crimes including culpable homicide and other violent offences, the Globe reported.

Dancho told The Epoch Times she believes the issue stems from illegal border crossings that have surged since 2017 after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau posted his famous “Welcome to Canada” tweet to “those fleeing persecution, terror & war” in January of that year.

According to Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, at its peak, there were 8,558 “irregular border crossers” from July to September 2017 entering Canada to seek asylum.

A young man from Yemen is handcuffed by an RCMP officer after crossing the border into Canada near Hemmingford, Que., on Feb. 17, 2017. (The Canadian Press/Paul Chiasson)

Dancho said the “astronomical spike” of illegal border crossings has put a strain on Canada’s immigration system and impacted legitimate refugee asylum claims. She noted that her party supports immigration and providing a safe environment for refugees, but it must be done legitimately and for those who really need the support.

“About 100,000 individuals crossed the border illegally since 2017,” she said. “We’ve had quite the problem on our hands trying to process that many asylum claims, but only one in five of them were found to be actually legitimate.”

Dancho also pointed to data that violent crime has increased over the past seven years by 32 percent, and that there were more than 124,000 additional violent crimes last year than in 2015 when the Conservatives were in power.

“It is to the detriment of all immigrants, all Canadians when the Liberals don’t take it seriously [to] ensure that they’re deporting those who are dangerous and managing our border effectively and safely,” she said.

The Epoch Times reached out to Public Safety Canada for comment but did not hear back by publication time.

‘Entitled to Due Process’

In an emailed statement on Oct. 18, the CBSA said it is “strongly committed to ensuring the safety and security of Canadians.”

“Removing individuals who are inadmissible for criminality is of paramount importance to protect the safety and security of Canada and its citizens. The CBSA takes all necessary measures to remove inadmissible individuals as quickly as possible from Canada,” said spokesperson Karine Martel.

While the agency did not comment further on those it lost track of, it said it has removed over 48,000 people from the country, including nearly 4,000 high-risk individuals over the last five years.

The CBSA added that foreign nationals who are convicted of a crime in Canada, and are granted parole with a view toward deportation, are “entitled to due process before the law and have access to various levels of appeal, including judicial review at the Federal Court.”

“In fact, some of these individuals may still be going through the immigration process and may not be subject to a removal order when granted parole,” Martel said.

“In addition, individuals may be entitled to submit an application for a Pre-Removal Risk Assessment to Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) prior to removal.”

Martel said if the applicants prove eligible, their applications will stay the removal order until IRCC comes to a decision, but stressed that the CBSA will monitor their whereabouts closely and remove them once the removal order becomes enforceable.

Cases Stalled or Missing

According to an “Immigration Removals” report by the Auditor General of Canada in 2020, for several years the CBSA “did not know the whereabouts of a large number of foreign nationals who were subject to enforceable removal orders.”

“It issued immigration warrants for their arrest but seldom completed the annual investigations to locate those with criminality,” the report said.

“Despite a recent increase in removals, about 50,000 enforceable cases had continued to accumulate in the agency’s inventory. In two thirds of these cases, the agency did not know the whereabouts of the individuals. Most of the accumulated cases had been enforceable for several years.”

The report said case files were missing due to poor data quality. Because of delays in processing data received from federal partners, the CBSA did not have the necessary information needed to track the status of the removal orders. Even high-priority cases were “inactive or stalled.”

“Furthermore, many cases we examined were stalled because of missing travel documents, such as passports—yet little was done to obtain these documents,” the report said.

Police ‘Struggling to Keep Up’

Dancho said the federal government has failed to allocate enough resources to law enforcement agencies to keep Canadians safe and ensure violent criminals are held accountable.

“I’ve met with police forces across the country and they are united in saying that they cannot keep up with the demand that violent crime presents—they’re struggling to keep up,” she said.

“This is certainly a police resourcing and border officer resourcing issue and prioritizing that comes from the top.”

Dancho said to reverse the situation, Trudeau must order Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino to prioritize deportations of those foreign nationals convicted of serious crimes.

“We also need to ensure that dangerous offenders are kept behind bars,” she said.

“We need to have a compassionate approach when it comes to those who are from really tough backgrounds and end up in tough circumstances, but we also need to weigh that against ensuring that the public is protected from the most dangerous.”