Update: A paralysed refugee claimant won a reprieve from deportation early Wednesday.
The Province
Officials from the Canada Border Service Agency arrived at a Sikh temple in Surrey, B.C. around 4:15 a.m. local time to tell a group of more than 300 supporters that Laibar Singh will not be deported Wednesday.
"They came here and told us they weren't going to deport him today," said Harsha Walia, a spokeswoman for No One is Illegal. "It happened pretty fast."
The CBSA had told Singh's lawyer late Tuesday that it was going to remove the disabled man from the sanctuary of the temple and deport him back to India.
Laibar, who became paraplegic after suffering an aneurysm while under an immigration removal order, stayed in Canada after a crowd of close to 2,000 gathered at Vancouver airport to block his return to India last month.
He has been in the Sikh temple since Dec. 15.
Wednesday's story in The Province:
The Canada Border Service Agency was to deport a disabled man to India from the sanctuary of the Surrey Sikh Temple at 4:30 a.m. Wednesday morning.
The CBSA told immigration lawyer Zool Suleman, who is representing Laibar Singh, Tuesday afternoon that it planned to deport Singh to India before dawn.
"The community at large is outraged [because] the Sikh temple has declared sanctuary and that Laibar Singh is in their protection," Harsha Walia, a spokeswoman for the South Asian community, said last night. "He is in sanctuary at the temple.
"CBSA's actions are in breach of sanctuary, which is historically and currently a moral tradition that's maintained in Canada."
Suleman said he was informed in writing by a senior CBSA official that "they will be attempting to collect Mr. Laibar Singh from the gurdwara at 4:30 this morning."
Laibar, who was rendered a paraplegic by an aneurysm while under an immigration removal order, stayed in Canada after a crowd of close to 2,000 gathered at Vancouver airport to block his return to India last month.
He has been in the Sikh temple since Dec. 15.
"I'm very concerned on behalf of my client," said Suleman.
"I continue to have concerns about his health and readiness for travel."
Suleman said Singh has widespread support to stay in Canada. "He has over 30,000 signatures on a petition and has broad-based support from many, many organizations.
"I'm also very concerned that this is needlessly provocative. The community has made it very clear that they wish for the minister to intervene.
"And they're still trying to communicate with the minister.
"So it just seems to me that the will of the community is not being heard here in this humanitarian case."
Diane Finley, the immigration minister, and Stockwell Day, the minister responsible for the Canada Border Services Agency, are the two federal ministers responsible for the case.
"[Singh] is in the gurdwara, and it is a sanctuary space. And we are hoping that CBSA will respect the religious sanctuary that the Sikh gurdwara has extended to Laibar Singh," said Suleman.
"There has never been a breach of a religious sanctuary in Canada and we would hope that this Sikh gurdwara would not be the first such breach.
"We're very concerned that the local office is acting precipitously given that there's still a desire to have a dialogue with the minister.
"It's a breach of sanctuary, which is something that has been protected historically and presently in Canada.
"Sanctuary is a tradition that different faith groups, predominantly churches, have afforded to those that they believe are unjustly being deported. It's a moral act of conscience. It's an act of courage that people take in order to stand up to unjust laws and unjust government decisions.
"Sanctuary has been protected in Canada. There's no law protecting sanctuary, but historically sanctuary has been protected as a moral position in Canada."
There have been about 34 cases of sanctuary in Canada over the past few decades, including nine right now.
The border services agency could not be reached for comment.