Somali refugee who swam across border approved to stay in Canada

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This article was published 30/09/2015 (3443 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s been the worst of years and the best of years for Yahya Samatar — an amazing, hair-raising race with life-or-death consequences.

The aid worker fled for his life from Al Shabaab in Somalia in August 2014, walked for weeks through the jungle, was locked up for months in immigration jails in Texas and Louisiana, then swam up the Red River into Canada.

After surviving all that, he faced his final challenge Wednesday — a refugee protection hearing in Winnipeg, conducted by an adjudicator in Toronto via video-conferencing — which ended happily for him as he was granted protected status.

His leg was shaking as it began.

Immigration and Refugee Board member and adjudicator Kevin Boothroyd in Toronto told reporters they had to leave the hearing. Samatar’s lawyer argued the highly publicized case was in the public’s interest and the media needed to be there. Boothroyd said the media couldn’t be there without the minister of Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s approval, and it had no representative at the hearing because it was not intervening in Samatar’s case. The reporters had to leave but, within half an hour, they were allowed back in to the hearing after Boothroyd received a fax saying the minister had no position on the media being there.

The adjudicator grilled Samatar on his identity, his aid work in Somalia and NGO training outside the country. Then the audio died.

It came back on after a half-hour recess. Samatar straightened his tie and braced himself for more questioning. What he got instead was a big surprise.

“I’ve given consideration to the evidence heard so far, and I’ve decided I am going to accept this claim,” Boothroyd told a stunned hearing room.

“I wish you the very best of luck in Canada,” he said to Samatar after giving the reasons for his decision.

“It’s really unbelievable,” Samatar said afterward. He was prepared for hours of further questioning when Boothroyd ruled the 32-year-old English-speaking aid worker and journalist is now a protected person in Canada.

Samatar, he said, had a credible fear of persecution by the terrorist group Al Shabaab if he was sent back to Somalia. Samatar was kidnapped twice by the group that opposed his human rights and development work. His brother was mistaken for him and killed by Al Shabaab on Feb. 25, 2014, Samatar’s refugee claim said.

Boothroyd saw photos the aid worker posted on his Facebook timeline that showed the work with NGOs he was doing and when he said he was doing it. He produced a faxed death certificate from a hospital in Kismaayo for his brother who was killed by Al Shabaab.

The social-justice projects Samatar was working on — anti-corruption and anti-female genital mutilation programs and preventing the recruitment of children by Al Shabaab, for instance — ran contrary to Al Shabaab’s beliefs, Boothroyd said.

Samatar has no reasonable hope of protection from the state if he’s returned to Somalia. The east African country has been without a fully functioning government since civil war broke out in 1991. Aid workers such as Samatar are often targeted by Al Shabaab, Boothroyd noted.

Samatar is no longer a refugee claimant, but officially a “person in need of protection.” When he gets the written decision in three to six weeks, he will legally be able to work in Canada. Then he can apply for permanent resident status. When that is granted in 12 to 14 months, his wife and four children will be able to join him in Canada.

“I want to make Winnipeg my home,” Samatar said Wednesday, thanking Manitobans for their kindness and hospitality. He expressed gratitude to be in a country that upholds human rights.

“I’m happy the Constitution of Canada gave me protection,” he said.

“Refugee protection laws were written for people like Yahya,” his lawyer, Bashir Khan, said after the hearing. “The refugee system is there to protect people like Yahya and the system worked.”

The woman who fetched Samatar from the border crossing at Emerson after he swam up the Red River into Canada in August was at the hearing and gave Samatar a big hug.

“He’s like one of my children,” said Karin Gordon, the settlement manager at Hospitality House Refugee Ministry. Samatar has been staying at the charity’s residence since he arrived but will move into a two-bedroom apartment today with another fellow. He’s been volunteering as an interpreter and has driven to the border with Gordon several times to fetch other Somali refugee claimants who need help. Wednesday night, he spoke to volunteers at the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization of Manitoba.

Samatar said he’s eager to get his work permit, get a job and start saving money to bring his wife and children here. On top of their airfare, he’s looking at more than $1,000 in application fees for them to come to Canada.

Samatar said earlier his family scraped together US$12,000 to pay smugglers to get him from Somalia to Ethiopia, then Brazil, and help him make his way by land through Central America to the U.S. border at Matamoros, Mexico. “I took buses and walked in the jungle for one month,” he said earlier.

In the U.S., he was apprehended as an illegal alien and spent six months in a detention centre in Texas and another 10 weeks in a centre in Louisiana. After his asylum hearing, Immigration Judge Robert L. Powell ruled that being a persecuted aid worker who counselled kids not to join Al Shabaab was Samatar’s choice and did not entitle him to protection.

“The internationally accepted concept of a refugee simply does not guarantee an individual a right to work in the job of their choice,” the judge in Texas wrote. The U.S. will protect someone persecuted for a political opinion but not someone who is persecuted by a political group because of the work they do, his decision said. “Persecution on account of… political opinion relates to persecution on account of the victim’s political opinion, not the persecutor’s.”

Boothroyd said he is not bound by the U.S. decision and disagreed with it. “The claimant’s work was squarely engaged in issues of governance and corruption of government… He was trying to effect political change by doing his work.”

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca