Federal judge blocks release of Tamil migrants

Four Tamil migrants from the MV Sun Sea who were granted release from detention on Tuesday will have to remain in custody at least until Thursday after the federal government successfully got the Federal Court to temporarily block the releases.

The legal jousting was not unexpected. The government made similar moves last year during detention hearings for Tamil migrants from another ship, the Ocean Lady.

The sparring began on Tuesday when the Immigration and Refugee Board ordered the releases of four women — three mothers and a single woman — after finding that the government was not making reasonable efforts to verify their identities.

The government quickly filed motions with the Federal Court of Canada to temporarily halt those releases.

Late Tuesday night, a federal judge agreed by phone to temporarily stay the releases of the three mothers. On Wednesday afternoon, the same judge temporarily stayed the release of the fourth woman in Federal Court in downtown Vancouver.

The government is arguing that it needs more time to authenticate identities. Even in cases where analysts have deemed that migrants' identity documents are probably genuine, the government says it still needs to make sure those documents weren't issued or obtained fraudulently.

Helen Park, a lawyer for the government, cited in Federal Court Wednesday a U.K. Border Agency report that referred to the ease with which fraudulent ID documents can be obtained in Sri Lanka.

The report cites a 2008 letter from the British High Commission that states: "Genuine documents are so easy to obtain fraudulently, there is no need to forge them. It is suspected that there are many more ID cards in circulation than the actual total population."

Verifying migrants' identities is essential to knowing whether they might pose a danger or might be a flight risk, Park said.

"Identity," she said, "is the linchpin."

Robert Blanshay, the lawyer representing the woman whose case was heard in Federal Court Wednesday, said that the government had failed to apply its broad concerns about forged documents to his client.

Duty counsel for the migrants have repeatedly argued during detention hearings that the government is moving too slowly to authenticate documents and that the government has not made it clear what will actually satisfy them and how much more time they will actually need.

"The immigration division made the correct decision (in releasing the migrants)," Douglas Cannon, one of the duty counsel for the migrants, said in an interview Wednesday.

Both sides are scheduled to make fuller arguments in Federal Court on Thursday afternoon.

If the Federal Court agrees to extend the stay of releases beyond Thursday, the government could then move to seek a judicial review, which requires the government to prove that the Immigration and Refugee Board made an error in law or fact or both.

Earlier this week, a pregnant woman with three children became the first of the 492 Tamil migrants to be released since they arrived on the B.C. coast on Aug. 13. The government has not contested her release.

The migrants are currently going through their third round of detention hearings.

The government has sought the continued detention of the migrants on the grounds that their identities have not been verified in all cases but one.

In one case, the government has argued that the migrant poses a potential security threat because of possible links to the Tamil Tigers, which Canada has deemed a terrorist group.