Deportation of woman who fled abusive partner underlines failures of immigration system: advocates

Carla, a woman from Brazil who struggled as an undocumented migrant, dreamed of being a nurse in Canada, but a violent relationship with a rural New Brunswick man ended that ambition.

Six years later, advocates are considering how her fate could have been different had she found a shelter suited for refugees — or if Canada had move forward with regularizing the status of more undocumented people.

Now, a federal “border security” bill could make it harder than ever for undocumented migrants to survive, activists say.

In July 2019, Carla met Jeremias Tecú, a former refugee from Guatemala known for his support of refugees in Fredericton. He connected Carla with other advocates willing to support her and her 19-year-old son. Carla wanted to stay in Canada and escape inhumane treatment and violence she said she experienced in Brazil.

After escaping intimate partner violence in a rural community outside of Woodstock, Carla struggled to pay her rent. Her landlord not only evicted her for late payment, he reported her undocumented status to the Canada Border Services Agency.

CBSA officers intercepted Carla and her son, taking her to a shelter in Fredericton. A Fredericton resident opened her home to Carla’s son, allowing him to stay there while the mother and son reported daily to CBSA.

“When I came to Canada legally, I came because of a dream to serve the country as a nurse. But I was treated with so much racism against immigrants that I couldn’t ever had imagined,” said Carla.

As Carla’s advocates scrambled to assist Carla and her son with filing a pre-removal risk assessment, a last ditch effort to stop Carla and her son’s deportation, Carla was detained by CBSA while she stayed at a Fredericton shelter and transported to the New Brunswick Women’s Correctional Centre in Miramichi. She recalls being detained there for 42 days before she and her son were deported to Brazil.

“My son was completely damaged inside when we arrived back to Brazil. We had to rebuild our lives and souls after all the pain of being rejected in another nation just for being a foreigner,” said Carla. “It’s very sad our world today.”

Carla believes she was detained because she had overstayed her visitor visa and was considered a flight risk. Like most other immigrant detainees in Canada, Carla was not considered a danger to the public: she was simply undocumented.

An estimated half a million people in Canada are undocumented. Without legal documents to stay in the country, undocumented people live in constant fear of detention and deportation, with restricted access to health care and other essential services, or none at all.

Migrant advocates have long called for the regularization of the immigration status of undocumented migrants under the slogan “Status for All.” A new federal “border security” bill appears to make that possibility even more remote than ever, alarming migrant advocates.

Bill expands ‘mass deportation machine’  

Federal Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree tabled Bill C-2 on June 3.

The bill would allow the government “to cancel or amend permanent or temporary resident visas, work permits, study permits, temporary resident permits, electronic travel authorizations, permanent resident cards or any other immigration document.”

If the bill is passed, asylum claims filed more than one year after a potential refugee has entered Canada won’t be admissible for referral to the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, the body responsible for assessing such claims.

The bill would also stop those who entered Canada along the Canada-US land border outside a port of entry from claiming refugee status. Previous rules allowed people to make a refugee claim within 14 days after having entered Canada.

“Prime Minister Carney campaigned on being different from Donald Trump, yet his very first bill is a shameful capitulation to racism and xenophobia, which abandons Canada’s legal and moral obligations to refugees and migrants,” said Syed Hussan, a spokesperson with the Migrant Rights Network in a media release.

“We’re witnessing the deliberate expansion of a mass deportation machine designed to tear apart families and communities,” he said. “With over 3,000 study and work permits already expiring daily because of Trudeau’s immigration cuts, this bill will only worsen a humanitarian catastrophe. This bill is immoral, it is illegal, and it will be stopped.”

Anandasangaree and Public Safety Canada did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

The Migrant Rights Network wants the Liberals to make good on then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s 2021 mandate letter to his Minister of Immigration. It instructed the Minister to “further explore ways of regularizing status for undocumented workers who are contributing to Canadian communities.”

But in 2024, annual removals reached their highest level since at least 2015. Most of the people deported in 2024 had their refugee claims rejected.

“Just like Carla, many refugee claimants are turned away because they simply did not have access to timely and adequate legal assistance,” said Tecú, a founder of the New Brunswick-based Madhu Verma Migrant Justice Centre.

“Our legal clinics are woefully underfunded,” Tecú said. “Regularizing the immigration status of people in the country would go a long way towards alleviating the strain on our legal aid system.”

Named after a former refugee from the Pakistan-India partition and longtime newcomer advocate in New Brunswick, the Madhu Centre formed in 2022 after a dozen migrant workers, many of them undocumented, ended up in Fredericton and in need of emergency assistance after being subjected to labour trafficking.

Tecú says that since its founding, the Madhu Centre has supported about 200 migrant workers and refugee claimants navigating abusive working conditions. The Madhu Centre has also noticed more cases of people who need support fleeing intimate partner violence.

In March, Canada granted legal status to 6,000 undocumented construction workers, but migrant advocates like Tecú want more groups of workers to benefit from permanent residency and citizenship.

“It’s simply the humane thing to do, for the undocumented who are serving us food and cleaning our buildings,” he said. “Having status to be in the country is the best way to ensure everyone’s human rights are protected.”

The Madhu Centre, the Canadian Council of Refugees and other advocates also want Canada to withdraw from the Safe Third Country Agreement.

The Safe Third Country Agreement prevents migrants who are seeking entry to Canada through the U.S. — a so-called “safe country” — from claiming asylum in Canada and vice versa.

Advocates say U.S. President Donald Trump’s hardline anti-immigration measures make it ever more urgent to protect the lives of immigrants who are ending up in detention and dying while crossing the Canada-U.S. border.

They also note that migrants will continue to cross borders as trends including the global climate crisis force them to look for a better life abroad, but they will do so in more dangerous conditions.

Immigration Minister Lena Metlege Diab did not respond to a comment for this story.

New Brunswick to welcome more permanent residents, asylum seekers

On June 13, the New Brunswick government announced it will receive 4,250 permanent resident nominations this year, an increase of 1,500 compared to the number announced in February. The province is also planning to welcome 400 asylum claimants to the province within two years.

Jean-Claude D’Amours, acting minister of post-secondary education, training and labour, and minister responsible for immigration, linked the increase to the labour market.

“Newcomers are critically important to addressing New Brunswick’s workforce demands, and we have continued to make that clear with our federal counterparts,” D’Amours said in a media release.

The announcement also highlighted federal funding through the Interim Housing Assistance Program for temporary housing for refugee claimants. It’s the kind of support that might have prevented Carla’s deportation.

“I often think about Carla, and whether she and her son would still be in New Brunswick had she entered a refugee shelter system equipped to meet her unique needs as a traumatized woman seeking refuge in Canada,” Tecú said.

This report is part of a series titled Documenting Discrimination and Inequality. 

With files from Tracy Glynn.

Editor’s notes:

Correction: An earlier version of this story stated that Carla was reported to CBSA for missing curfew at a Fredericton shelter. However, Carla later said that wasn’t the case. The story was updated to reflect this information on July 7, 2025 at 5:41 PM AT.

The NB Media Co-op is not using Carla’s real name because of the risks she may face following her deportation. 

We are also protecting the identity of the author, whose immigration status is precarious. The author is an immigrant and is based in Moncton. She holds a Master of Law degree from a Canadian university. She has also conducted volunteer research with the Madhu Verma Migrant Justice Centre.  

Disclosure: Tracy Glynn, coordinating editor of the NB Media Co-op, is also a co-founder of the Madhu Centre.