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Abdoul Abdi’s supporters protest his possible deportation at Trudeau town hall

23-year-old who came to N.S. as a refugee is being detained in New Brunswick

Emma Smith 


About a dozen protesters showed up to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s town hall on Tuesday evening. (Marine von Stackelberg/CBC)

A 23-year-old former refugee from Somalia is waiting in a segregated cell in New Brunswick tonight as his supporters call attention to his case at the prime minister’s town hall in Sackville, N.S.

Abdoul Abdi came to Nova Scotia at the age of six, along with his aunt and sister, but spent much of his childhood in the care of the province and shuffled between foster homes.

Nova Scotia’s Department of Community Services never applied for him to become a Canadian citizen, and he’s now facing possible deportation because of his criminal past, according to his lawyer Benjamin Perryman.

Abdi, who was recently released from prison after serving time for charges including aggravated assault, is currently being detained on immigration grounds by the Canada Border Service Agency.

His supporters want government officials to release Abdi, to let him stay in the country he’s spent much of his life, and to overhaul how non-citizen children are dealt with.

Abdi and his sister were almost immediately taken into the care of the province when they arrived in 2000. Perryman said it was up to Community Services to apply for citizenship on his behalf.

“If Canada had cared for this child, we may not be in this situation today, and I think Canada has to take some responsibility,” he said.

Re-arrested on Thursday

Perryman said his client has pleaded guilty to the charges, and served roughly four years in prison. He was released on Thursday and on his way to a halfway house, but was met at the gates by CBSA officials.

Abdoul Abdi came to Canada as a refugee from Somalia in 2000. (Submitted by Benjamin Perryman)

“He is responsible for those crimes and is serving his sentence. But Canada has a responsibility for its part in creating this person, for its part in making this person vulnerable,” said Perryman.

That responsibility includes the fact that Abdi was shuffled between 31 different homes while in the protection of child services, said Perryman.

A spokesperson for the Office of the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness declined an interview and said it could not comment on specific cases due to privacy reasons.

Children fall through cracks

“He’s completely made in Canada, and he’s made by the neglect and abandonment of a Canadian system, and this very system is the same one that’s going to remove him,” said Julie Chamagne, executive director of the Halifax Refugee Clinic.

She said Abdi is not the only child to have fallen through the cracks, and she wants the Department of Community Services to take a serious look at how it treats non-citizen children.

“We need to acknowledge and examine our role in these oppressive systems here in Canada that traumatize and marginalize and criminalize especially Indigenous, black and racialized youth and then punish them unduly,” she said.

A spokesperson for the department said Minister Kelly Regan was not available for an interview Tuesday.

‘We’ll sentence refugees to death’

Poet and activist El Jones, who organized the protest tonight, worries what will happen if Abdi is sent back to Somalia.

“It is a death sentence, his sister has said that, “Jones said. “We do not have the death penalty in Canada, but essentially we’ll sentence refugees to death.”

Perryman said Abdi’s first attempt to get out of detention failed on Monday, and that he’s had very limited contact with his client.

“I did speak with him yesterday, and he reported to me that his conditions are terrible, and that from his perspective, he would be better off to be back in jail. He doesn’t understand why he’s being treated in this fashion,” he said.

Source: CBC

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