Call it policy-making by stealth.
A little tweak of Canadian Border Services Agency regulations, and suddenly women’s shelters in the city are one step down from the inviolate sanctuaries they need to be.
It was just four months ago that a coalition of groups wrested a city-only directive from the local wing of CBSA that prevented agents from entering or waiting outside shelters or anti-violence spaces.
But the activists campaigning for the change had little time to celebrate their humanitarian victory. On February 11, the head office of CBSA issued a national decree that effectively overrode the local understanding.
Community organizer Nora Currie was one of about 10 people called to a meeting with CBSA that morning, presumably to discuss their hard-fought arrangement. She said the Border Services officials at first denied anything had changed.
Eventually, Currie’s group, which included representatives from the anti-violence and immigration advocacy communities, was presented with the new policy, which allows agents to enter shelters seeking those under deportation orders.
“This was clearly problematic and the opposite of what had formerly been negotiated,” she says. “At that point we disbanded the meeting and asked CBSA to leave.”
Many in that community say women without legal status may now have to choose between assault and being forced to leave the country. “Everyone should be able to access services no matter what their status,” says “Sarah,” a front-line worker who asked NOW to withhold her real name to safeguard her clients’ confidentiality.
“I hope [the change] doesn’t affect that, but I think it probably will.”
Sarah, who’s worked in emergency spaces, health clinics and other facilities for abused women, was once at a shelter when immigration agents came looking for a client. She says it violated the promise of safety shelters work hard to provide.
Abusers, she says, often call immigration officials to report their estranged partners, leading victims to view CBSA agents as an extension of their abuser’s power.
The new policy, obtained by NOW, details the steps agents must take in order to enter such a facility. “While cases where a foreign national enters a women’s shelter require heightened sensitivity, the obligation to investigate and remove the individual does not cease to exist in those circumstances,” states the policy, which hadn’t been executed anywhere as of February 18, according to CBSA.
It was put in place to ensure that the service conducts investigations with sensitivity, spokesperson Sabrina Mehes tells NOW. “Under the directive, CBSA officers will enter shelters only under the most critical of circumstances, such as for security risks and criminals, both of whom pose potential threats to residents staying at shelters and the public at large,” she says.
At Red Door Shelter, which often supports women who have fled to Canada to escape a violent partner, executive director Bernnitta Hawkins says the policy “interferes with our ability to provide protection. We had been given assurances that Border Services would not come in. It could spread like wildfire that shelters do not provide the protection these women need.”
Trinity-Spadina MP Olivia Chow, the NDP Immigration critic, says the change could mean more kids in jail, as women usually take their children when fleeing violence.
Children can be taken into custody with their mothers whether they are Canadian-born or not, Chow says, noting that 15 to 20 kids are detained in Canada on any given night. “It leaves psychological scars,” she said, citing studies that link childhood detention to psychological problems, bedwetting and delayed intellectual development. Chow says she’d like to see health clinics, schools, childcare centres, shelters and hospitals deemed off-limits to immigration enforcement.
The new regulations, says Farrah Miranda, an organizer with migrants-rights group No One Is Illegal, only add to an already difficult situation for undocumented women. “This makes for a doubly traumatizing experience and sends a message to abusers that they are free to abuse women with no status.”
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