Nicholas Keung, Toronto Star, Fri Oct 23 2009

“A woman between the ages of 20 and 30 was found murdered – and with evidence of childbirth – with blows to her body and a bullet in the forehead, a classic revenge from drug trafficking,” said a June 5 story in the Mexican newspaper El Informador de Jalisco. A death certificate later classified the woman’s death as a homicide. What the coroner’s office didn’t mention was that the 24-year-old murder victim and her mother and sister had twice sought refuge in Canada, in 2004 and 2008, from drug traffickers. The same men are thought to have kidnapped and killedyoung Grise, leaving the fate of her baby unknown, after she was forced back to Mexico.

Grise’s tragic death highlights the need to give refugees a right to appeal when their applications are rejected, say Toronto advocates.

“We need to have an immigration ombudsman to look into mistakes made in the immigration and refugee system,” said Francisco Rico-Martinez of FCJ Hamilton House refugee shelter, which the family contacted for help. “The system does make mistakes.”

Both Immigration Minister Jason Kenney’s office and the Immigration and Refugee Board declined to comment on the case.

On Tuesday, Parliament’s citizenship and immigration committee voted 6-5 to establish an appeal division to hear the cases of failed refugee claimants. All five Conservative MPs voted against it.

The recommendation now goes to Parliament for a vote that will hinge on Liberal support. Both the New Democrats and Bloc Québécois staunchly support an appeal unit.

FCJ Hamilton House persuaded the federal government to issue a visitor’s visa so the surviving mother and sister could return to Canada earlier this month.

“I am happy and sad to be back,” said a tearful Nuemi, the dead woman’s mother. “I’m sad because my daughter had to be killed in order for Canada to believe in our story. The price is just too high.” She asked that the Star not publish the family’s full names out of fear for her relatives’ safety in Mexico.

Nuemi, 44, along with Grise, 24, and Bebe, 17, first arrived in Canada in 2004, after Nuemi’s ex-husband was murdered by Colombian drug traffickers associated with the La Familia Michoaeana gang in Mexico. The gangsters believed the man had stolen their drug money and passed it to his ex-wife, she said.

In 2005, their asylum claim was rejected. The board said, among other things, that the family hadn’t made enough effort to seek help from Mexican authorities.

“I changed my residence 10 times to avoid our attackers. Every time, they found us,” said a grieving Nuemi. “Canada has to recognize that Mexico is a war zone run by drug cartels. The government just can’t protect its own citizens.”

Rico-Martinez said an appeal process in such cases “would allow another pair of eyes to look at the case. It would give the claimant a second chance to address those concerns.”

A subsequent pre-removal risk assessment, carried out by a federal official, recognized the family faced “subjective fear” in Mexico but said they hadn’t refuted arguments that they would be protected by the state back home.

Facing deportation, the family went into hiding. But in August 2008, when Grise returned to Mexico to visit her dying grandmother, she was attacked and raped, leaving her pregnant. She came back to Canada but was deported in December. Her mother and sister were deported in February.

Grise was kidnapped again last March, then seven months pregnant. Her body was found in June.

The death certificate determined a Caesarean section had been performed about a month before she was killed, the whereabouts of the premature baby unknown.

Nuemi had to pay Ottawa $3,400 for the expenses of their deportation before she and Bebe were granted the temporary visa for a tenuous safety back in Canada.

Lawyer Aviva Basman, of Toronto’s Refugee Law Office, called her clients’ tragic story “symbolic” of Canada’s attitude to asylum seekers from Mexico, which Ottawa doesn’t see as a refugee-producing country.

Citizenship and Immigration Canada said the government makes every effort to ensure that people are not removed to a situation of risk. “In rare cases, persons removed from Canada fall victim to unfortunate circumstances, which may or may not be related to factors examined in the pre-removal risk assessment,” the department said in a statement to the Star. “The government would not necessarily be opposed to an appeal mechanism in the context of a streamlined, reformed asylum process.”

Kenney slapped visa requirements on visitors from Mexico and the Czech Republic this summer to curb rising asylum claims, claiming too many were bogus. He is also said to be seeking new regulations to expedite claims from ostensibly democratic nations such as Mexico.

“Then we see a case like this,” said Basman, who wants Ottawa to give the family permanent resident status. “This is an extraordinary, tragic reminder that there are real consequences to this political posturing.”