How claiming to be a refugee became a get-out-of-jail-free card

2025/12/17 Leave a comment

Pretty clear case of abuse of asylum that undermines support for refugees:

This month, B.C.’s newly minted Extortion Task Force was zeroing in on 14 foreign nationals accused of participating in an extortion crime wave currently terrorizing the Lower Mainland.

Starting in earnest in 2023, organized gangs have been roving through Surrey and Abbotsford demanding large sums of cash from South Asian businesses, and then attacking non-payers with arson or gunfire.

More than 130 such incidents have occurred just in 2025, yielding a weekly tally of shootings and vehicle fires. This rash of violence is one of the main reasons that Ottawa declared India’s Bishnoi Gang a terrorist entity in September, accusing them of generating terror among Canadian diaspora communities “through extortion and intimidation.”

But according to an exclusive report by Stewart Bell at Global News, just as the Canada Border Services Agency began investigating 14 alleged extortionists, all of them claimed to be refugees, instantly stopping the investigation in its tracks.

In a Thursday statement, Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke called out how the “international thugs and criminals” abused the asylum system in order to “extend their stay in Canada.”

Guests in our country who break our laws need to be sent home,” she said.

The case of the Surrey 14 is one of the more brazen abuses of the refugee system to date. But it’s nothing new that a foreign national would claim refugee status to evade deportation. Or that asylum status would be used as a tool of foreign criminal gangs.

Because, as the Surrey case illustrates, it works.

If the accused are indeed extortionists, they’re likely to eventually face some kind of removal order or criminal prosecution. But by merely telling border authorities “I am seeking asylum,” they’ve potentially obtained up to two additional years on Canadian soil.

As of the most recent estimates of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, there is a backlog of at least 24 months until refugee claimants can have their case put before an immigration officer.

As such, any foreign national claiming to be a refugee can be assured of at least two years of living in Canada under the status of an asylum claimant….

Source: How claiming to be a refugee became a get-out-of-jail-free card

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Surrey imam who misrepresented himself to immigration officials jailed for sexual assault

2020/12/09 4 Comments

Of note, particularly how the British Columbia Muslim Association mishandled the complaint and the community’s shunning of the complainant:

The emotional wounds from a sexual assault at the hands of a Lower Mainland imam four years ago continue to affect the daily life of his victim, who says if immigration officials and the B.C. Muslim Association had intervened sooner, the attack may never have happened.

The woman, whose identity is protected by a B.C. Supreme Court order, says she has received no community support for her turmoil and is being shamed as a victim.

“When people see me, they think I am not good woman,” she said. “I got with priest and put him in the jail.”

Pakistani national, 46-year-old Abdur Rehman Khan, is serving a three-year sentence on one count of sexual assault and will remain a registered sex offender for 20 years.

In 2017 he was convicted for assaulting the woman who he came to know through his work in the Muslim community in Surrey.

His story shows the lengths he went to in misleading immigration officials to stay in Canada and the lack of intervention provided by the B.C. Muslim Association, which described his criminal case as a “personal matter.”

The assault happened in July 2016, three months after he had been ordered to leave the country.

‘Nobody support me’

His victim is outraged that Khan continued as an imam at Masjid-Ur-Rahmah after he was charged and granted bail, as well as after he was convicted and awaiting sentence.

She also doesn’t understand how he was able to avoid discovery by immigration officials for years.

She, in the meantime, has had to give up her job and many activities to avoid being ostracized by some people in the Lower Mainland’s Muslim community.”Nobody support me,” said the woman who has no family in the country.

Multiple names and attempts to immigrate

Abdur Rehman Khan’s attempts to live in Canada span almost three decades.

In 1993, he was included as a dependent in an application by his brother Mohammad Tayyab to sponsor their mother to Canada but when Khan’s application for permanent residency was denied, he appealed but didn’t wait for a decision.

During the appeal process, Khan successfully obtained a visitor visa under the name Abdul Rehman and once in Canada, in February 1999, he made a refugee claim under the name Ibuhuraira Khan.

The claim was refused in October 2000. One month later, Khan tried again to stay here through the sponsorship of a wife. At an immigration hearing, Khan conceded the marriage was not genuine and solely for immigration purposes.In September 2001, he was deported from Canada, under the name Ibuhuraira Khan.

It was only after he’d been removed from Canada that in 2003 he was actually accepted for permanent residency to Canada under the original 1993 application.

Misled officials

Upon his arrival, in Vancouver, in April 2003, as Abdur Rehman Khan, he was asked by immigration officials if he had ever been “convicted of a crime or offence, refused admission to Canada or required to leave Canada.”

Khan said no according to transcripts of his immigration hearings.

Officials did not know he’d been to Canada before, used other names, had travel documents in those names, nor that he’d made a previous refugee claim and had been deported.

In 2014, Khan’s past caught up with him when the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) received word that the information he had provided officers was false.In June of that year when asked directly if he’d ever used any other names, including nicknames, he stated “no.” When asked whether he knew the name Ibuhuraira Khan, he said “no.”

In April 2016, the Immigration and Refugee Board issued an exclusion order against Khan but he appealed the order on the basis of humanitarian and compassionate considerations.

A year later, in April 2017, the Immigration Appeal Division dismissed his appeal and at that point it was up to the CBSA to execute his removal order.

Two months later, though, when Khan was arrested and charged with sexual assault the removal process was stalled.

‘Personal matter’

Khan was granted bail on July 6, 2017 and once released, he returned to his position as imam at the mosque Masjid-Ur-Rahmah where he continued to lead prayers, inter-faith meetings, teach youth and officiate at marriages and funerals.

After his trial and conviction in January 2020, he again went back to work until August when he was sentenced to three years in prison.

BCMA president Iftab Sahib says Khan submitted a resignation letter in August 2020.

The association, however, considered Khan’s reasons for quitting as his “personal matter,” he said and asked no questions.

Sahib declined to be interviewed further about why Khan was allowed to stay on the job after he was charged and convicted.

In an email, BCMA spokesperson Tariq Tayyab said, “at no time was BCMA made aware of the serious allegations and criminal charges brought against the individual.”

His employment with the BCMA ended in August of this year and Tayyab directed any other inquiries to the association’s lawyer.A member of the BCMA Women’s Council also reneged on an interview after initially saying it was important to address the issue and to ensure the community knew what had transpired.

Multiple marriages

Khan’s subterfuge with immigration officials also involved multiple marriages aimed at achieving residency in Canada.

The woman Khan married in the fall of 2000 was the divorced spouse of his brother Mohammad Tayyab. The marriage ended when it failed to secure Khan permanent residency in Canada.

The woman later re-united with Tayyab.

Meanwhile, in Pakistan, Khan already had a wife and five children which he never disclosed to immigration officials. At his August 2020 sexual assault sentencing, in B.C. Supreme Court, the judge acknowledged Khan visited his overseas family every other year until 2016. The oldest of those children now lives in B.C.

According to Immigration Appeal Division (IAD) documents, it’s unlikely he ever divorced his wife in Pakistan. As well, he remains married under a different name to his brother’s wife.The IAD also says Khan married and separated a third time, in 2014, in B.C., representing himself as single when he got that marriage certificate.

CBC News has learned that in spring of 2016, Khan married again in the midst of his latest Immigration and Refugee Board removal hearing.

The woman was a Canadian citizen living in B.C. The marriage lasted only a matter of months.

Victim shaming

Other people from the province’s Muslim community say the web of lies and deceits and ultimately Khan’s crime of sexual assault should be better addressed.

Yahya Momla, an imam from Masjid-Al-Salaam, in Burnaby, has often spoken out about victims who come forward with their trauma and are further marginalized.

“It would be untruthful to say victim shaming doesn’t happen in certain communities,” he said. “Why this happens? Partly it is a misconstrued sense of honour.”Momla says some people feel they must not speak openly about victims of domestic or sexual abuse happening in relationships. That attitude though, he says, is not faith-based.

His message to the Muslim community is that victims should never be blamed, but provided with support.

‘Open your eyes’

Khan’s victim says as long she continues to be shunned the matter will never be over.

Her message to the community is to, “open your eyes. Don’t look down on [victims] even if [the attacker] is a priest.”

Vancouver Immigration consultant Divya Bakshi Arya says in cases like this one, removal orders are not acted upon until the person has served their sentence.

At that time though Khan could apply to federal court to have his removal order stayed and that could spin into months or years of additional hearings.

His victim says she is afraid of him still living in the Lower Mainland if he is not sent back to Pakistan

Source: Surrey imam who misrepresented himself to immigration officials jailed for sexual assault

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The fight to staunch a street war in Surrey, B.C.

2016/04/16 Leave a comment

Integration, but into the drug trade and gangs:

[Simon Fraser University criminologist Robert] Gordon, who has been studying the phenomena of drug crime and gang violence in Surrey for 20 years, says the recent trouble is just the extension of shootings that have come and gone dating back two decades. “It all stems from conflicts between groups trying to gain control over the illegal drug trade. It’s all about market share, retaliation-driven, including this latest round.”

It’s a “classic struggle,” says Gordon. In the 1980s a wave of new immigrants arrived from Honduras and El Salvador; they arrived at the same time as a group from Fiji, sparking an early conflict. By the early ’90s, new arrivals from Vietnam were muscling in on the area’s marijuana trade.

Surrey is a very mixed community, he adds. “It has a lot of new Canadians, and it seems as if each successive wave of minority populations runs into this particular problem: Often, they are coming over with poor English skills, low job prospects, they’re coming from places with a lot of violence. For some, the fast money the drug trade provides can be very attractive.”

The latest conflict came “after the arrival of a new group from the Horn of Africa, mostly Somalis,” he says. “They settled in Surrey because it’s less expensive than anywhere else in the Lower Mainland, and some appear to have moved in on existing drug networks run primarily by existing Canadians of South Asian origin. South Asian gangs, not wanting anyone to muscle in, are pushing back. A lot of shooting has involved just that.”

It was only last week that the Surrey RCMP dropped the shocking news that as of April 1, there had been 28 shootings—half of last year’s tally—in just the first three months of 2016. Until then, the public had only been made aware of 16.

Source: The fight to staunch a street war in Surrey, B.C.

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Changing face of Surrey presents challenges

2014/08/11 Leave a comment

Profile on the changing face of Surrey, BC, given an increasing refugee population:

Tsering Yangkyi stirs a pot of tea she is making on the stove in a basement suite in Surrey. For Yangkyi, her husband Lhakpa Tsering and their three children, the Fleetwood neighbourhood where they currently reside is a far cry from the rural Tibetan settlement in India where they used to live.

Yangkyi and her family represent the changing face of the city as immigrants and refugees from countries around the world continue to settle in Surrey.

Thirty years from now the face of the city may be different from what it currently is, where South Asians make up the majority of immigrants in the city. Families like Yangkyi, Tsering and their children may be the future of Surrey, but there are many challenges up ahead for them and other newcomers.

Immigrants and refugees face a number of difficulties. Language and cultural barriers make it difficult for newcomers to access resources, and it also makes it challenging to find employment.

Surrey has become a top destination for government-assisted refugees: 32 per cent of government-assisted refugees in B.C. settled in Surrey in 2013. Among the many challenges these refugees face, one is having to pay back an interest-bearing loan provided by the government to cover transportation costs to Canada.

Changing face of Surrey presents challenges.

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