Why the immigration detainee who died in custody ‘had no end date’ for his jail stay

There was no deadline to get Abdurahman Ibrahim Hassan out of jail and out of this country.

The immigration detainee was being held at the Lindsay, Ontario Provincial Jail while awaiting deportation from Canada.

He had been there since he lost a final court appeal in November 2013.

And he was still there, more than a year and a half later, when a medical episode began the saga that would lead to his death.

On Tuesday, a senior Canada Border Services Agency official explained to the investigation into Hassan’s death why the man was still in Canada at the time.

Hassan had arrived in this country in 1992 and was granted asylum a year later. But he had been targeted for expulsion since 2005 due to what was called his serious criminality. He exhausted all avenues of appeal, over the years, culminating in him fighting to overturn a “danger opinion” against him.

“To return or deport someone to a foreign country, we need the approval of that country to be able to effect that removal,” CBSA CEO Carl Desmarais testified. “We also need to have the presence of a travel document. In the case of Mr. Hassan, we had insured both.

“There are very few airlines that fly directly to Somalia. There is one airline in particular that had a special requirement to obtain a statement from a customer to show that the customer was actually cooperating with the removal effort. That was an outstanding requirement for us.”

Instead, Hassan remained in Lindsay jail, often in segregation due to his serious mental health illnesses, with no “end date” for his release or deportation.

On June 3, 2015, the 39-year-old man was taken to a Peterborough hospital for seizures. He died eight days later after a struggle in his hospital room under the surveillance of two police officers on duty.

Part of the scope of the investigation is to examine how the federal detainee ended up in a provincial facility and the different roles various government agencies played in his detention.

According to CBSA, Hassan’s criminal convictions date back to 1999 for assault and escalated over the years to robbery, larceny and death threats. Twice, in 2005 and 2008, he was found inadmissible to Canada.

In 2009, border officials asked then-immigration minister Jason Kenney to issue an opinion declaring Hassan a danger to the public. In 2013, the minister’s deputy concluded that Hassan’s threat to Canadians outweighed the risks he might face if he returned to war-torn Somalia.

Desmarais said federal-provincial detention agreements allow the CBSA to hold high-risk immigrant detainees in provincial jails like Hassan’s case in Ontario. While there is no legal limit to the length of detention, he said detainees are regularly reviewed by an independent court to justify continued detention.

Federal immigration detention centers do not have the capacity to handle inmates with complex mental health problems, he added.

Border officials would have limited interactions with an immigration detainee in a provincial jail other than at detention reviews or during attempts to get the person to sign documents to facilitate removal, Desmarais said.

“The day-to-day management of the detainee is left in the hands of the province for different operational reasons,” he explained.

Desmarais said detention is a last resort, as community-assisted bail programs and technology, such as ankle braces, are available to mitigate the potential risk of someone’s release. Since 2017, CBSA officers have been using the National Arrest Risk Assessment to assess the best option for each case.

But Desmarais maintained that detained immigrants are being held for reasons of “program integrity and public safety.”

“It is to help the elimination. It is not to facilitate rehabilitation or reintegration into society.”

During cross-examination, Desmarais said that four provinces: British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, and Nova Scotia — they have already notified the federal government of their plan to end their immigration detention arrangements with CBSA on human rights grounds.

“What is the government going to do?” asked forensic lawyer Jai Dhar.

“I can tell you that he is currently in active negotiations with those particular provinces. I think that, in the interest of public safety, it is important that we make sure that we have a proper and smooth transition,” Desmarais responded without disclosing details of a contingency plan.

The investigation resumes Thursday.

Nicholas Keung is a Toronto reporter covering immigration for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @nkeung

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