A poster used for rallies across Canada earlier this week in support of Abdi’s release. Credit: BY Amber Williams-King, VIA FACEBOOK

Canada’s Federal Court will hear the case of a former ward of the province facing deportation to Somalia.

Abdoul Abdi’s fate was to be decided on Wednesday by the Immigration and Refugee Review Board. But news of the federal hearing later this May caused the IRB to put a pause on its own proceedings.

The 24-year-old Abdi arrived in Nova Scotia at the age of six with his family, but was taken from his mother and put into provincial care soon after.

Through the course of the next 12 years, the department of Community Services failed to apply for his citizenship.

Abdi, who has a criminal record, is now facing deportation back to an unfamiliar country with no family and a language he doesn’t speak. Family members have called it tantamount to a death sentence.

On Tuesday, supporters across the country gathered in several planned protests—including at Nova Scotia’s Legislature—calling for the federal government to intervene and allow Abdi to remain in Canada.

The IRB will meet back on March 21 to decide whether it will wait for a verdict from the Federal Court, or make a ruling of its own.

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2 Comments

  1. Oh he looks so sad… Perhaps there should be a drawing of him repeatedly smashing the skull of a man with a hand gun who called him a thug

  2. This is insane!

    They took the children away from the aunt within days of arrival and no explanation can be found anywhere. No investigation was launched as to why this child was bounced 31 times from one terrible home to another terrible home, when they probably were in a good home to begin with. If social services did nothing wrong, release the records and details of why they were taken from their home!
    This sounds like a case of the 60s scoop, which is STILL HAPPENING to this day!
    Very inhumane and insulting. The immigration museum in NS and human rights museum in SK should both be shut down as they don’t actually represent the proper picture!
    They can re-open when the Canadian government actually upholds these values.

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