Jamie Sarkonak: Canada keeps asking non-citizen criminals to stop. They obviously don’t

A Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) shoulder patch was photographed at the Calgary International Airport on Tuesday June 3, 2025. Photo by Gavin Young/Postmedia

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In 2017, a permanent resident of Canada named Mudasar Hussain was convicted of dealing drugs. Here was an opportunity to return him to his home country of Pakistan, but the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) didn’t take it: instead, it sent him a “stern warning letter” advising him that it wouldn’t take enforcement action if he stayed out of trouble — even though he was now considered inadmissible.

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This practice of asking non-citizen offenders to stop breaking the law, instead of simply deporting them, goes back to at least the 1990s.

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It’s not a strong deterrent, either: Hussain went on to commit more crimes, and removal proceedings resumed in 2022. Even that took forever: his deportation flight was scheduled for just this Monday. The Federal Court refused his last-ditch plea to remain in Canada earlier this month, but whether he actually left is a mystery. Federal officials firmly refuse to confirm whether deportations of criminals have taken place because privacy laws don’t expressly allow them to do so.

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Hussain is not the kind of person we would want as a permanent resident. He came to Canada in 2005 at age 21 under the sponsorship of his brother. He entered an arranged marriage in Pakistan in 2009. He became addicted to drugs around 2011. He brought his wife to Canada in 2014; he was later convicted of domestic assault, landing him 15 months in prison. They separated and he moved to Vancouver, where he bounced from East Hastings Street to jail and back until his family placed him in rehab last summer.

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He told the court he was now clean, and argued that deportation would set his recovery back. The judge didn’t buy it at all. It was the right result, but this was a conversation we should have been having in 2017. Thanks to that stern warning letter, which naturally went ignored, we’re having it 2026.

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Court records show plenty more examples of this happening, usually when longtime permanent residents are convicted of a serious crime. In 2009, the immigration appeals tribunal decided the case of Karlene Alexander, a Jamaican woman with permanent residency who had accumulated some 65 convictions between 1986 and 2008 for matters including violence, fraud and drug dealing. The adjudicator noted that in 1992, 23 offences into her record, the woman received a stern warning letter indicating that officials weren’t going to pursue removal, but that could change if she didn’t stop.

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“That letter apparently did not deter the appellant, as she continued to commit criminal offences,” wrote the adjudicator, who ultimately ruled in favour of deportation.

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In 2011, the immigration appeals tribunal heard the case of Rodrigo Ibanez, a permanent resident from Chile who came to Canada as a toddler; he had joined a gang at age 12 and began racking up convictions shortly after turning 18. He was sent a stern warning letter in 1998, which did not dissuade him; indeed, it seemed to enable more bad behaviour: “During an investigation of a domestic assault, one of his ex-girlfriends asked police not to lay charges against him because of the threat of deportation he faced,” noted the adjudicator in 2011. By that time, his criminal record was described as “lengthy.” The tribunal decided against letting Ibanez stay.