An Alberta judge has given a refugee who pleaded guilty to sexual assault and drug trafficking more time to appeal his convictions after he argued that his lawyer misled him into thinking he would not be deported for the crimes.
Mahir Yahya Sharif pleaded guilty to sexual assault and trafficking methamphetamine and fentanyl in 2022, and was sentenced to three years in prison, according to court documents.
He is now facing deportation to Somalia after the federal immigration minister determined that he posed “a danger to the public in Canada.”
In a July 27 ruling, Alberta Court of Appeal Justice Kevin Feth granted Sharif an extension of time to file an appeal of his convictions, finding that the interests of justice favoured allowing him to challenge his guilty pleas in light of his claim that he did not understand their potential consequences for his immigration status.
The ruling pauses the refugee’s immediate deportation and gives him a legal path to challenge convictions he says he accepted without understanding the immigration consequences.
Sharif had argued that his former lawyer downplayed the risk of deportation and told him his refugee status would protect him from removal. He said he would not have pleaded guilty had he understood that his convictions could result in his removal from Canada.
Feth said in his ruling that denying Sharif the chance to appeal “means he will suffer the ‘unduly punitive effect’ of removal from Canada based on guilty pleas that would not have been entered had he been properly informed, and deportation to a dangerous country he does not know and that does not want him.”
Deportation Appeals
Sharif was granted entry into Canada through the refugee settlement program in 2019, when he was 19, and held permanent resident status at the time of his convictions in 2022, according to the court documents.He was born in Saudi Arabia in 1999, following his parents’ escape from Somalia. He and his family were recognized as Convention refugees in 2013 by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees due to racially motivated attacks in Somalia, the birthplace of his parents. At that time, the applicant and his family resided in a refugee camp in Egypt.
Sharif has a history of schizophrenia that has been worsened by substance use, which seemingly began after his arrival in Canada, the judge wrote in his ruling.
An affidavit by Shariff before the court indicated that he breached his parole and was returned to custody at the Regional Psychiatric Centre in Saskatchewan in late 2024.
He was visited by an immigration officer twice in early 2025 and was provided with immigration documents in English, but “did not understand what the immigration proceedings were,” according to the ruling.
Sharif was found inadmissible to Canada for serious criminality in October 2023 and lost his permanent-resident status as a result.
“Mr. Sharif’s criminal activities were both serious and dangerous to the public, in addition to the lack of evidence of rehabilitation and the difficulty following rules, I have reasonable ground to believe that Mr. Sharif represents a present and future danger to the Canadian public, whose presence in Canada poses an unacceptable risk,” said a report from the federal immigration ministry in assessing Sharif’s case last May.
The report also cited a “less than reasonable chance” that the applicant would be at risk if returned to Somalia, and that any humanitarian and compassionate considerations for his continued residency in Canada were outweighed by the danger he posed to the public.
Soon after, Sharif was placed in the custody of Canada Border Services in Ontario, to await deportation, which was scheduled for June 30, 2025.
He was advised that Somalia had alerted Canadian officials that he would not be permitted entry into the country, which meant he would be deported to Nairobi, Kenya, and would have to find his own way to Somalia, the ruling said.
Sharif applied for a judicial review of the immigration ministry’s decision, but a judge dismissed his application in May of this year. The Ontario Court of Appeal dismissed his appeal on July 2, and stayed his removal for 60 days.
Sharif had also applied to the Alberta Court of Appeal to request more time to appeal his convictions.
“The primary argument is that at the time of his guilty pleas, the applicant did not understand the collateral consequences of those pleas, including that his convictions and sentence would make him inadmissible in Canada and lead to his deportation with no ability to appeal,” said Feth.
Sharif said his lawyer advised him that failing to plead guilty would result in a lengthier sentence, and that he would not be at risk of deportation because the charges were not “serious.” Sharif argued he wouldn’t have pleaded guilty if he knew that he would be deported after serving his sentence.
Sharif’s convictions included trafficking large amounts of methamphetamine and fentanyl to undercover police officers and a sexual assault of a woman while both were patients in a psychiatric care facility, according to the ruling. Sharif also pleaded guilty to taxi fraud, theft under $5,000, and mischief.
The judge described the decision to remove Sharif from Canada as “harsh” and he said the man’s mental health condition and the immigration process did not adequately account for how those with mental health issues are treated in Somalia.
“In my view, the interests of justice favour an extension of time to file a Notice of Appeal to appeal his convictions,” the judge said. “The applicant has satisfied most of the factors for an extension of time, and to the extent he has not, I conclude that unique and special circumstances exist such that the extension should be granted.”
