Canada: Immigration Board Refuses To Release Man Detained For 4 Years

Ebrahim Toure, originally from The Gambia, is Canada's longest serving immigration detainee currently in detention. Toure has once again gone before the Immigration and Refugee Board for his release, but has failed.

Toure is a 46-year-old failed refugee claimant, who has been in detention within Central East Correctional Centre in Lindsay, Ontario since February 2013. His home country of The Gambia will not take him back, because he does not have any documentation proving his citizenship, and is being detained on the grounds that the Canadian government believes he will not show up if they can arrange his deportation.

The Canadian government's reasoning seems quite odd, considering Toure has fully cooperated, which they claim he was not doing. He has even provided them with every piece of information he has and says himself that he would like to be deported.

He had his detention review on June 15^th. Following the review, a written decision was delivered three weeks later, where board member Suzy Kim said that he "lacks credibility" and has largely contributed to his own detention.

Kim then mentions in the decision, Toure's past. His fake passport that was used to gain entry to Canada, history of aliases in the U.S., his previous claims that he was from Guinea, and the reason for his detention, a 12-year-old conviction for selling pirated CDs and DVDs in Atlanta, which he pled guilty and served no jail time.

His unreliable past and previous offences should have not wound him up in a maximum-security jail, especially considering he has no criminal record in Canada. He could have spent his last four years in a different holding centre, which would accommodate detainees with no criminal record.

Earlier in the year, Jared Will, Toure's lawyer successfully secured the release of a seven-year immigration detainee, Kashif Ali. The ruling was sharply critical of the government's practice of indefinite detention.

Will said he intends to take this case to the Superior Court.

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