Family pleads to keep father of five in Canada

There’s no question, Yussef Mohamed’s five children love their father, but they are forced to imagine life without him.

“I’m not really well in a mental space, I can’t sleep really because I’m just worried about what happens to him,” explained Yussef’s eldest daughter.

Mohamed is scheduled to be deported from Edmonton, the day after Father’s Day.

“I’m a father, I have five kids and a wife. If they take me, they destroy seven people, not only me,” said Mohamed.

The Somali man is confused, and frustrated, and he’s been through this before.

In 2018, after pleas through the media, including CityNews, the federal immigration minister stayed Mohamed’s deportation to allow time for spousal sponsorship.

But five years later: “Every time I call, they say it’s still processing, it’s progressing, everything looks good,” said Halima Ali, Mohamed’s wife.

Mohamed has spent the last decade in Canada trying to prove his identity as a Somali refugee to the government. The matter has been made complicated because the deportation notice is in the name of a Kenyan passport he says is falsified.

He bought it in a refugee camp, and used to travel to Canada in 2013 to reunite with his wife and, at the time, two children.

“In an environment where there was a civil war, terrorism, all kinds of things, you are in survival mode. The Canadian immigration system is fully aware of this,” said Guled Kassim, a friend and advocate.

For Mohamed, he still has a work permit until the end of the year and is pleading to stay to support his family.

“When I come Canada, my wife and kids get welfare. When I come to Canada I cut that welfare until now, ten years, they don’t take welfare. I take that responsibility to me, I’m tax payer. I don’t have criminal record. I don’t know why they do this,” he explained.

Canadian Border Services tells CityNews it cannot comment on individual cases for privacy reasons, but said: “The discretion that a removal officer may exercise to defer a removal is very limited, and in any case, is restricted to ‘when’ a removal order will be executed rather than ‘whether the individual will be removed.’ A removal officer cannot defer a removal indefinitely.”

A petition to the Canadian government on behalf of Mohamed has over 35,000 signatures.