Is Canada Violating Its Constitution by Sending Refugees Back to the United States?

A federal court case could stop Ottawa from treating the United States as a safe third country due to the Trump administration’s harsh policies toward asylum-seekers.

ONTREAL—Murder, rape, extortion, and threats of violence: The affidavit presented to the Federal Court of Canada read like a list of horrors, detailing the circumstances that forced a Salvadoran woman and two of her children to flee their home.

“They said they were going to kill me and my daughters,” the woman, identified only as ABC, said in the 14-page document, about an incident involving local gang members in 2016. “I decided I could not keep living this way, having constantly paid these men money for years, and having my life threatened constantly. I decided to leave my home.”

After traveling through Mexico and into the United States, the woman’s journey to find protection brought her to Canada, where her husband had sought refuge a few years earlier. But when she got to the border in January 2017, Canadian officials turned her away, pointing to a little-known bilateral accord known as the Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA).

The idea underpinning the deal is that each country has an asylum system that meets international standards, and therefore both Canada and the United States can be deemed safe countries for refugees.

After consulting with lawyers, she went back to the border months later to file another application for refugee protection in Canada. But this time, she also would challenge the constitutionality of the deal itself. “Despite my great fear of being returned to the U.S., I saw no other option,” she said in her affidavit.

Enacted in 2004, the STCA makes it impossible for most refugee claimants, barring certain exceptions, to make an application for protection in Canada at an official border crossing if they first arrived in the United States and vice versa. The idea underpinning the deal is that each country has an asylum system that meets international standards, and therefore both Canada and the United States can be deemed safe countries for refugees.

But refugee advocates in Canada have raised concerns for years that Washington is skirting its responsibilities, and they have repeatedly called on Ottawa to suspend the agreement. The Salvadoran woman’s lawsuit, which was heard in Toronto in November, is the latest attempt to have the bilateral accord deemed unlawful.

“Our argument is that by sending the people back to the U.S., we are violating their rights to particularly liberty and security of the person,” said Janet Dench, the executive director of the Canadian Council for Refugees, an advocacy group that is supporting the woman in her case alongside Amnesty International and the Canadian Council of Churches.

The risks asylum-seekers face in the United States have been widely documented, including prolonged detention, family separation, and forced returns to the countries from which they fled. Amnesty International last year said the Trump administration’s policies had “caused catastrophic irreparable harm to thousands of people.”

The risks asylum-seekers face in the United States have been widely documented, including prolonged detention, family separation, and forced returns to the countries from which they fled.

“With the risks that the U.S. will not protect people and will send them back to face persecution in their country of origin, then Canada is also complicit in that,” Dench said.

The Canadian government says checks and balances are in place under the STCA to make sure refugee claimants do not face a risk of refoulement—the forced return to a country where they could face persecution—and that it regularly monitors whether the U.S. government is meeting its human rights obligations. The United States is a signatory to the Convention Against Torture and the Refugee Convention, and it remains safe, Ottawa argues.

Fonte: foreignpolicy.com/

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