Canada’s auditor general has found major flaws in the Canada Border Services Agency’s (CBSA) handling of immigration cases, particularly when it comes to enforcing deportations.
A report released on Wednesday found that the whereabouts of a staggering 34,700 people up for deportation are not known, and that the CBSA was not conducting regular attempts to locate them.
The auditor general concluded that the CBSA is routinely failing to provide basic immigration enforcement in a timely manner.
“A case can sit inactive during the removal process for many valid reasons: Waiting for requested travel documents is one example. However … we determined that there were thousands of inactive cases in the agency’s working inventory with no explanation,” the auditor general wrote.
“Despite its mandate to enforce removal orders as soon as possible, we found that the CBSA did not effectively monitor enforceable cases in its working inventory to make sure they were advancing toward removal.”
Over 1,500 deportation orders could not be enforced because of errors made by immigration and agency officers when they entered the orders into the immigration database.
The report did not mention how the speed of deportations would change since CBSA paused deportations in March due to coronavirus concerns.
The report suggests that thousands of deportation orders have been enforceable for 4 years or more without deportation actually occurring.
In January, it was revealed that CBSA had a massive backlog of people of over 52,000 individuals awaiting deportation.
According to the CBSA, failed asylum claimants make up the largest share of deportation orders. However, the January report said only a small fraction of those ordered to leave since 2017 have actually left.
