Human smuggler issued new Canadian passport after court ordered surrender of travel document 

Sigh, highlighting systemic coordination failure:

The federal government issued a new passport to an admitted human smuggler after he was ordered to surrender the travel document as part of court-imposed release conditions, CBC News has learned. 

The new passport was discovered in June 2023 by RCMP investigators executing a search warrant at the Montreal home of Thesingarasan Rasiah during a probe targeting an international human smuggling network that Rasiah allegedly headed, according to court records obtained by CBC News. 

At the time, Rasiah was living at home with an electronic ankle bracelet on strict conditions while awaiting sentencing on a February 2023 guilty plea to one count of breaching the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act for his role in the smuggling of a Sri Lankan national from the U.S. into Canada in 2021.

Rasiah had been forced to surrender his passport to the RCMP in 2021 as part of his release conditions related to the human smuggling attempt that was intercepted by police in Cornwall, Ont., located about 120 kilometres west of Montreal along the Canada-U.S. border.

Rasiah was also forbidden from applying for any new travel documents.

Smuggling operation linked to deaths

Rasiah was charged on April 1, 2021, after he was caught in a Cornwall motel parking lot receiving a Sri Lankan national who had just been smuggled into Canada. He was sentenced to 15 months in jail in September 2023. 

He was re-arrested this past May by the RCMP on charges he led an international human smuggling organization that moved hundreds of people north and south across the Canada-U.S. border. He remains in custody.

Investigators with the Cornwall Regional Task Force — which includes officers from the RCMP, Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) and Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) — also linked Rasiah’s organization to the deaths of nine people on the St. Lawrence River in late March 2023. Two families — one from India, the other from Romania — drowned with a boatman in rough river waters trying to get into the U.S. 

The new passport seized by RCMP during the search of Rasiah’s home in 2023 was issued by Service Canada on April 11, 2023, less than two weeks after eight bodies were pulled from the river, according to a copy of the document filed with the Ontario Court of Justice. …

Source: Human smuggler issued new Canadian passport after court ordered surrender of travel document