Not safe
Canada’s federal court has ruled that an asylum agreement the country has with the US is invalid because America violates the human rights of refugees.
The Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA), in place since 2004, requires refugee claimants to request protection in the first safe country they reach.
But on Wednesday, a judge declared the deal unconstitutional due to the chance that the US will imprison the migrants.
In other words refugees who tried to go from the US to Canada were being turned back at the border on the grounds that they were already in that “first safe country.” Lawyers for refugees pointed out that what they were already in was not safe.
Nedira Jemal Mustefa, one of the refugees forced to remain in the US, told the court her time in US solitary confinement was “a terrifying, isolating and psychologically traumatic experience,” according to the court ruling.
“We’re all too familiar with the treatment that the US metes out to asylum seekers,” Maureen Silcoff, president of the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers, told Reuters news agency.
It’s shameful. Being a refugee is not a crime.
Federal court judge Ann Marie McDonald ruled that the deal was in violation of a section of Canada’s Charter of Rights that bans the government from interfering in the right to life, liberty and security.
“It is my conclusion, based upon the evidence, that ineligible STCA claimants are returned to the US by Canadian officials where they are immediately and automatically imprisoned by US authorities,” Judge McDonald said in her ruling.
“I have concluded that imprisonment and the attendant consequences are inconsistent with the spirit and objective of the STCA and are a violation of the rights guaranteed by section 7 of the [Charter of Rights and Freedoms],” she continued.
All thanks to the crime boss from Queens.
