Stay order issued on Migrante head deportation

Stay order issued on Migrante head deportation

Danilo de Leon, Migrante Canada chairperson

‘Small temporary victory’

By Nestor Burgos
The Philippine Reporter

VANCOUVER—The wait for the email message was excruciating for Danilo de Leon but it was one the most important he ever received in his life.

At 4:30 p.m. on August 28, he received the message with the decision of the Federal Court of Canada granting his appeal to stay his scheduled deportation to the Philippines the next day, on August 29.

“I waited all day after the online hearing. When I got it, I read and re-read the 14-page order and then called my lawyer. I wanted to be sure because it was a like a decision whether I will be hanged or not,” De Leon, chairperson of the Filipino migrant rights group Migrante in Canada, told The Philippine Reporter.

The stay order, which will remain in effect until the court rules on its judicial review on De Leon’s deportation, does not yet guarantee that he can permanently stay in Canada. But it has boosted his hopes and those supporting the campaign to stop his deportation.

“It is a small, even if still temporary, victory,” De Leon said.

De Leon, who came to Canada in 2009 as a foreign temporary worked and worked for a cleaning company in Alberta, lost his status in 2017 after the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada denied his application for a bridging open work permit.

He was served an exclusion order in 2018 and deportation order this year.

De Leon has filed an application for a Pre-Removal Risk Assessment (PRRA) to prevent his deportation.

The PRRA ensures that those removed from Canada and sent to another country are not in danger of torture, persecution or face risk to life or of cruel punishment.

Migrante and other groups and individuals supporting De Leon have been calling on the government through Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Minister Sean Fraser and Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino to stop his deportation and grant him permanent resident status.

They have stressed that De Leon’s faces “grave risk” and political persecution if deported to the Philippines as head of Migrante, an organization that has been continuously “Red-tagged” or labelled as “terrorist” by the Philippine government.

International and Philippine human groups have repeatedly pointed out that the linking of activists and human rights defenders to the underground Communist Party of the Philippines and its armed wing, the New People’s Army, is oftentimes a precursor or have led to the killing of hundreds of human rights defenders, lawyers, journalists, environmental activists and political dissenters in the Philippines.

Many others have been arrested, abducted and harassed after being Red-tagged, they have said.

The campaign to stop De Leon’s deportation has also cited his years of volunteer work including at the Edmonton General Hospital assisting elderly patients and also at the Edmonton Food Bank.

“I am relieved with the stay order and happy especially for my two daughters back home who are relying on me. I pray that that the Federal Court will rule positively,” De Leon said.

He said Migrante will “continue to push for a clear path to permanent residency for all temporary and undocumented workers here.”

Migrante and other groups belonging to the Migrant Rights Network, a nationwide alliance of organizations fighting against racism and for migrant justice, will hold a national Day of Action on September 18.

The online event seeks to highlight the call for an inclusive pathway to permanent residency.

“No one should be left behind,” De Leon said.