The basement condo in central Edmonton, where Luis Ubando Nolasco and his family carefully rebuilt a home and a life, is being emptied out.
The father, his wife Cinthya Carrasco Campos and their two young daughters are set to be deported to Mexico Monday. The family, who fled to Canada in 2018 in the wake of a family member’s homicide and ongoing threats, have been denied refugee status by the federal government.
In preparation for deportation, the family has sold off much of their furniture. In the living room, the TV is on the floor and the family has cushions to sit on. The wall above where there used to be a couch is still crowded with children’s artwork and drawings.
The two girls are finishing up the year at their elementary school. As they enjoy end-of-year parties and field trips, their parents are desperately trying to delay or stop the return to Mexico.
Ubando Nolasco has even tried to convince authorities to send him back first, alone.
“If they can just stay, I’ll go back. I can go,” he told CBC News last week. “Make an example of myself. If they want to see somebody’s been murdered, I can go back and get murdered.”
Little furniture is left in the family’s Edmonton apartment as they prepare for deportation. (Peter Evans/CBC)
Speaking through tears, the father shared his fears about what will happen to his children if they return to Mexico and are discovered by the people who, he says, have already killed his brother and are still actively looking for him.
“They will take my daughters, they will dismember them, and they will show me how they did that to my daughters,” Ubando Nolasco said. “That’s something that I don’t want to happen.”
On June 5, 2018, Ubando Nolasco’s brother, José Ubando Alvarez, told him someone was calling him and demanding money, according to federal court documents filed as part of the family’s case. Ubando Nolasco thought perhaps his brother was being targeted because of social media pictures he’d posted that gave the impression he was wealthy.
Ubando Nolasco said his brother laughed the threats off and sent mocking replies to their unknown source.
Two days later, on June 7, 2018, Ubando Alvarez was killed. He was shot multiple times, and police opened a homicide investigation that remains unsolved.
According to the documents, Ubando Nolasco provided evidence that, at his brother’s funeral, someone came up behind him, pressed something into his back and told him he would die unless he gave them money. He couldn’t see who it was, but soon began receiving threatening texts and calls demanding money.
Whoever was sending the threats to Ubando Nolasco started including details about Carrasco Campos and his two daughters as well. They knew where the girls were going to school.
The family went into hiding in Mexico before fleeing to Canada on a direct flight on July 11, 2018. Upon arrival in Vancouver, they obtained refugee protection.
There have been no arrests in connection to the brother’s death. Relatives and friends who have contacted the police to try to get more information have received pushback from police.
One relative even started receiving threatening messages, demanding to know the whereabouts of Ubando Nolasco. CBC News has viewed translated versions of those text messages, provided as part of the family’s refugee claim.
Arriving in Edmonton, the family settled into life as best they could under the circumstances.
The girls enrolled in school and, after a six month waiting period, the two parents were granted temporary work permits and got jobs. They’ve had to renew the permits annually but are still working — even with their deportation date just days away.
Denied refugee status
On Sept. 15, 2019, a three-member panel of the federal Refugee Protection Division heard the family’s claim for protection as refugees. According to written reasons for decision, the panel found that, while the threats the family faces are credible, they could take refuge in another part of Mexico.
Referred to as an “internal flight alternative (IFA)”, the panel suggested a region in a safer part of the country where it would be possible for the parents to find work.
The family argued that, in Mexico, student lists for schools are publicly available so it would be possible for a criminal group to track them down regardless of where they are.
The panel, however, found the family’s belief that whoever is making the threats would be able to find them is “speculative,” because the criminals’ identities are unknown, the amount of money they are seeking is unknown and the only motivation seems to be the alleged debt the brother owed the criminals.
The family appealed the decision. But in a February 2020 decision, the Refugee Appeal Division member upheld the panel’s decision.
“The existence of an IFA is fatal to any refugee claim. If a claimant can find safety from persecution by fleeing within their country, then they are not entitled to Canada’s surrogate protection,” wrote the member who rejected their appeal.
The family of four fled Mexico after a relative was shot to death and they started getting threatening demands for money. (Submitted by Luis Ubando Nolasco)
During their appeal, the family argued that it was “objectively impossible” for them to know the capacity or motivation of the people making the threats without knowing their identity.
In the written decision, the member who heard the appeal agreed, but found that, under Canadian law, the burden is on the appellants to show why the IFA isn’t a viable refuge for them, and that test hadn’t been met in this case.
The family sought a judicial review of the appeal decision, but that request was denied last September. Their counsel says they were notified in February.
As a last ditch effort, the family filed for humanitarian and compassionate leave to stay in Canada in April, but must return to Mexico in the meantime. The currently listed processing times are upward of a year.
The family has exhausted nearly all of their options.
With the help of a neighbour, who learned what was happening and stepped in, they’ve sought support from refugee support groups and met with staff from Edmonton Centre MP and federal Minister of Tourism Randy Boissaunault.
“We are actively looking into their cases and are in contact with colleagues at IRCC,” Boissonnault said in a statement via email.
Public campaign
Migrante Canada and its Alberta chapter have gotten involved in advocacy for the family.
“A public campaign is the only thing that we know of that can turn this around. Letting people know the stories out there, public pressure onto our political leaders — that is what we’re hoping would turn this around,” said Clarizze Truscott, vice-chairperson of Migrante Canada, who also sits on the Migrante Alberta executive.
Migrante Alberta is also in the midst of a campaign to stop another family from being forced to leave Canada: an undocumented single mother, who has a six-year-old Canadian daughter with health issues, is being deported to the Philippines.
They don’t have hard numbers, but Truscott said the organization is hearing from an increasing number of people who have suddenly been given deportation dates for June and July.
She said it’s baffling that the federal government is removing people while at the same time expanding the temporary foreign worker program.
“We’re removing them while opening the doors for a new set of workers with the same kind of temporary permits, essentially,” she said. “Why not keep the ones that are here? They have proven they belong to Canadian society.”
Ubando Nolasco and Cinthya Carrasco Campos from their Edmonton home. Little decoration is left as the family prepares for deportation, but children’s art and drawings still adorn the wall. (Submitted by Luis Ubando Nolasco)
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada cannot comment on specific cases without written consent due to privacy legislation, said department spokesperson Rémi Larivière.
All eligible asylum claims receive an independent and fair assessment of their claim through the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, he said. For those not normally eligible to become permanent residents through regular programs, or who have exhausted all other options, an application on humanitarian and compassionate grounds is available.
“Every individual facing removal is entitled to due process, but once all avenues to appeal are exhausted, they are removed from Canada in accordance with Canadian law,” Larivière said.
Minister Sean Fraser has been mandated to build on existing pilot programs to explore ways of regularizing status for undocumented workers and the IRCC looks forward to continuing this work, he said.
Seeking peace
If Ubando Nolasco’s family ends up back in Mexico, they will likely have to hide and try to seek refugee status in another country, hoping to get what they thought they’d found in Canada — a normal life where their daughters will be safe.
“We came here to give — to be safe — but we’re not here to take,” he said.
He recognizes there are many people seeking to remain in Canada, and that the government is in a difficult position.
He doesn’t want special treatment, but he wants people to understand the danger his family is facing. That’s why he and his wife decided to share their identities, despite being fearful of what going public — and then returning to Mexico — could mean.
“This is to give my daughters an opportunity to live in peace,” he said. “They are worth every single second of effort that I can make.”
Outside of sports and a “Cold front coming down from Canada,” American news media only report on Canadian events that they believe are, or will be, influential to the US. Therefore, when Justin Trudeau’s announcement, having finally read the room, that Canada will be reducing the number of permanent residents admitted by more than 20 percent and temporary residents like skilled workers and college students will be cut by more than half made news south of the border, I knew the American media felt Trudeau’s about-face on immigration was newsworthy because many Americans would relate to Trudeau realizing Canada was accepting more immigrants than it could manage and are hoping their next POTUS will follow Trudeau’s playbook.
Canada, with lots of space and lacking convenient geographical ways for illegal immigrants to enter the country, though still many do, has a global reputation for being incredibly accepting of immigrants. On the surface, Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver appear to be multicultural havens. However, as the saying goes, “Too much of a good thing is never good,” resulting in a sharp rise in anti-immigrant sentiment, which you can almost taste in the air. A growing number of Canadians, regardless of their political affiliation, are blaming recent immigrants for causing the housing affordability crises, inflation, rise in crime and unemployment/stagnant wages.
Throughout history, populations have engulfed themselves in a tribal frenzy, a psychological state where people identify strongly with their own group, often leading to a ‘us versus them’ mentality. This has led to quick shifts from complacency to panic and finger-pointing at groups outside their tribe, a phenomenon that is not unique to any particular culture or time period.
My take on why the American news media found Trudeau’s blatantly obvious attempt to save his political career, balancing appeasement between the pitchfork crowd, who want a halt to immigration until Canada gets its house in order, and immigrant voters, who traditionally vote Liberal, newsworthy; the American news media, as do I, believe immigration fatigue is why Kamala Harris is going to lose on November 5th.
Because they frequently get the outcome wrong, I don’t take polls seriously. According to polls in 2014, Tim Hudak’s Progressive Conservatives and Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals were in a dead heat in Ontario, yet Wynne won with more than twice as many seats. In the 2018 Quebec election, most polls had the Coalition Avenir Québec with a 1-to-5-point lead over the governing Liberals. The result: The Coalition Avenir Québec enjoyed a landslide victory, winning 74 of 125 seats. Then there’s how the 2016 US election polls showing Donald Trump didn’t have a chance of winning against Hillary Clinton were ridiculously way off, highlighting the importance of the election day poll and, applicable in this election as it was in 2016, not to discount ‘shy Trump supporters;’ voters who support Trump but are hesitant to express their views publicly due to social or political pressure.
My distrust in polls aside, polls indicate Harris is leading by a few points. One would think that Trump’s many over-the-top shenanigans, which would be entertaining were he not the POTUS or again seeking the Oval Office, would have him far down in the polls. Trump is toe-to-toe with Harris in the polls because his approach to the economy—middle-class Americans are nostalgic for the relatively strong economic performance during Trump’s first three years in office—and immigration, which Americans are hyper-focused on right now, appeals to many Americans. In his quest to win votes, Trump is doing what anyone seeking political office needs to do: telling the people what they want to hear, strategically using populism—populism that serves your best interests is good populism—to evoke emotional responses. Harris isn’t doing herself any favours, nor moving voters, by going the “But, but… the orange man is bad!” route, while Trump cultivates support from “weird” marginal voting groups.
To Harris’s credit, things could have fallen apart when Biden abruptly stepped aside. Instead, Harris quickly clinched the nomination and had a strong first few weeks, erasing the deficit Biden had given her. The Democratic convention was a success, as was her acceptance speech. Her performance at the September 10th debate with Donald Trump was first-rate.
Harris’ Achilles heel is she’s now making promises she could have made and implemented while VP, making immigration and the economy Harris’ liabilities, especially since she’s been sitting next to Biden, watching the US turn into the circus it has become. These liabilities, basically her only liabilities, negate her stance on abortion, democracy, healthcare, a long-winning issue for Democrats, and Trump’s character. All Harris has offered voters is “feel-good vibes” over substance. In contrast, Trump offers the tangible political tornado (read: steamroll the problems Americans are facing) many Americans seek. With Trump, there’s no doubt that change, admittedly in a messy fashion, will happen. If enough Americans believe the changes he’ll implement will benefit them and their country…
The case against Harris on immigration, at a time when there’s a huge global backlash to immigration, even as the American news media are pointing out, in famously immigrant-friendly Canada, is relatively straightforward: During the first three years of the Biden-Harris administration, illegal Southern border crossings increased significantly.
The words illegal immigration, to put it mildly, irks most Americans. On the legal immigration front, according to Forbes, most billion-dollar startups were founded by immigrants. Google, Microsoft, and Oracle, to name three, have immigrants as CEOs. Immigrants, with tech skills and an entrepreneurial thirst, have kept America leading the world. I like to think that Americans and Canadians understand the best immigration policy is to strategically let enough of these immigrants in who’ll increase GDP and tax base and not rely on social programs. In other words, Americans and Canadians, and arguably citizens of European countries, expect their governments to be more strategic about immigration.
The days of the words on a bronze plaque mounted inside the Statue of Liberty pedestal’s lower level, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” are no longer tolerated. Americans only want immigrants who’ll benefit America.
Does Trump demagogue the immigration issue with xenophobic and racist tropes, many of which are outright lies, such as claiming Haitian immigrants in Ohio are abducting and eating pets? Absolutely. However, such unhinged talk signals to Americans who are worried about the steady influx of illegal immigrants into their country that Trump can handle immigration so that it’s beneficial to the country as opposed to being an issue of economic stress.
In many ways, if polls are to be believed, Harris is paying the price for Biden and her lax policies early in their term. Yes, stimulus spending quickly rebuilt the job market, but at the cost of higher inflation. Loosen border policies at a time when anti-immigrant sentiment was increasing was a gross miscalculation, much like Trudeau’s immigration quota increase, and Biden indulging himself in running for re-election should never have happened.
If Trump wins, Democrats will proclaim that everyone is sexist, racist and misogynous, not to mention a likely White Supremacist, and for good measure, they’ll beat the “voter suppression” button. If Harris wins, Trump supporters will repeat voter fraud—since July, Elon Musk has tweeted on Twitter at least 22 times about voters being “imported” from abroad—being widespread.
Regardless of who wins tomorrow, Americans need to cool down; and give the divisive rhetoric a long overdue break. The right to an opinion belongs to everyone. Someone whose opinion differs from yours is not by default sexist, racist, a fascist or anything else; they simply disagree with you. Americans adopting the respectful mindset to agree to disagree would be the best thing they could do for the United States of America.
CALGARY – Sam Edney and Jesse Lumsden sat on a bench on Parliament Hill during an athlete celebration after the 2014 Winter Olympic Games.
Having just represented Canada in their sliding sports — Lumsden in bobsled and Edney in luge — the two men pondered their futures together.
“There was actually one moment about, are we going to keep going? Talking about, what are each of us going to do? What’s the next four years look like?” Edney recalled a decade later.
“I do remember talking about that now. That was a big moment,” Lumsden said.
As the two men were sounding boards for each other as athletes, they are again as high-performance directors of their respective sliding sports.
Edney, an Olympic relay silver medallist in 2018 and the first Canadian man to win a World Cup gold medal, became Luge Canada’s HPD upon his retirement the following year.
Lumsden, a world and World Cup bobsled champion who raced his third Olympic Games in 2018, leaned on his sliding compatriot when he returned from five years of working in the financial sector to become HPD at Bobsleigh Canada Skeleton in July.
“The first person I called when BCS reached out to me about the role that I’m in now is Sam,” Lumsden said recently at Calgary’s WinSport, where they spent much of their competitive careers and now have offices.
“It’s been four months. I was squatting in the luge offices for the first two months beside him.
“We had all these ideas about we’re going to have weekly coffees and workouts Tuesday and Thursday and in the four months now, we’ve had two coffees and zero workouts.”
Canada has won at least one sliding-sport Olympic medal in each of the last five Winter Games, but Edney and Lumsden face a challenge as team leaders that they didn’t as athletes.
WinSport’s sliding track, built for the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary and where Edney and Lumsden did hundreds of runs as athletes, has been closed since 2019 needing a $25-million renovation.
There is no sign that will happen. WinSport took the $10 million the provincial government offered for the sliding track and put the money toward a renovation of the Frank King Lodge used by recreational skiers and snowboarders.
Canada’s only other sliding track in the resort town of Whistler, B.C., has a fraction of Calgary’s population from which to recruit and develop athletes.
“The comparison is if you took half the ice rinks away in the country, hockey and figure skating would be disarray,” Edney said.
“It just changes the dynamic of the sports completely, in terms of we’re now scrambling to find ways to bring people to a location that’s not as easy to get to, or to live out of, or to train out of full time.
“We’re realizing how good we had it when Calgary’s (track) was here. It’s not going to be the end of us, but it’s definitely made it more difficult.”
Lumsden, a former CFL running back as well as an Olympian, returned to a national sport organization still recovering from internal upheaval that included the athlete-led ouster of the former president and CEO after the 2022 Winter Olympics, and Olympic champion pilot Kaillie Humphries suing the organization for her release to compete for the U.S. in 2019.
“NSOs like Luge Canada and Bobsleigh Canada Skeleton, they’re startups,” Lumsden said. “You have to think like a startup, operate like a startup, job stack, do more with less, especially in the current environment.
“I felt it was the right time for me to take my sporting experience and the skill set that I learned at Neo Financial and working with some of the most talented people in Canada and try to inject that into an NSO that is in a state of distress right now, and try to work with the great staff we have and the athletes we have to start to turn this thing around.”
Edney, 40, and Lumsden, 42, take comfort in each other holding the same roles in their sports.
“It goes both ways. I couldn’t have been more excited about who they hired,” Edney said. “When Jesse was coming in, I knew that we were going to be able to collaborate and work together and get things happening for our sports.”
Added Lumsden: “We’ve been friends for a long time, so I knew how he was going to do in his role and before taking the role, having the conversation with him, I felt a lot of comfort.
“I asked ‘are you going to be around for a long time?’ He said ‘yeah, I’m not going anywhere.’ I said ‘OK, good.'”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 4, 2024.
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – Canada’s Gabriela Dabrowski and New Zealand’s Erin Routliffe remain undefeated in women’s doubles at the WTA Finals.
The 2023 U.S. Open champions, seeded second at the event, secured a 1-6, 7-6 (1), (11-9) super-tiebreak win over fourth-seeded Italians Sara Errani and Jasmine Paolini in round-robin play on Tuesday.
The season-ending tournament features the WTA Tour’s top eight women’s doubles teams.
Dabrowski and Routliffe lost the first set in 22 minutes but levelled the match by breaking Errani’s serve three times in the second, including at 6-5. They clinched victory with Routliffe saving a match point on her serve and Dabrowski ending Errani’s final serve-and-volley attempt.
Dabrowski and Routliffe will next face fifth-seeded Americans Caroline Dolehide and Desirae Krawczyk on Thursday, where a win would secure a spot in the semifinals.
The final is scheduled for Saturday.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published on Nov. 5, 2024.
