Despite prayers and impassioned pleas to government officials, a Toronto-based preacher and her two young daughters are being sent back to Kenya.
On Wednesday, Reverend Rosalind Wanyeki and her children, Pearl (six) and Joylene (nine), attended an immigration hearing at the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) office at Mississauga’s International Centre. A judge denied the Reverend’s request to defer their deportation order.
Wanyeki had hoped to delay her family’s deportation from Canada until a decision had been made on their application for permanent residency, along with a risk assessment. To date, both applications have been denied, but are being appealed.
The family was originally due to leave the country earlier this year, but a deferral was granted until June to allow the girls to finish the school year.
Following Wednesday’s hearing, an order was issued for their deportation on Thursday. Wanyeki and her children are currently being detained by the CBSA pending their departure.
Documents obtained by CTV News Toronto show that tickets have been booked for the family with Ethiopian Airlines. Their flight to Nairobi via Addis Ababa is scheduled to depart from Pearson International Airport at 10:45 am.
CTV News Toronto spoke briefly to Wanyeki on the phone earlier today from inside the immigration detention centre near Rexdale Boulevard.
She said her children are frightened and scared and do not understand what is happening. They also have no memories of life in Kenya or any connection to the East African nation.
“At first, my daughters started crying immediately. They don’t know why they have to leave the city, so I had to calm them down,” she told CTV News Toronto.
Wanyeki, known to many in the community as Reverend Hadassah, came to Canada with her two children, aged four and eight months, in 2020 as refugees.
She said that they had been forced to flee Kenya because they were facing persecution from a powerful church leader in Nairobi.
Over the past five years, the family has built a life for themselves in Toronto, with Wanyeki founding and serving as senior pastor at Prayer Reign International Church in North York, Canada.
Meanwhile, Pearl and Joylene have settled into West Hill Public School in Scarborough, playing basketball at West Hill Gospel Hall and participating in various church programmes.
Canada may normally revoke an asylum seeker’s status if their claim is rejected, if they are deemed inadmissible, or if they are found to have provided false information.
Ms Wanyeki said that over the past five and a half years she had settled in Toronto, where she runs a gospel ministry, and her children attend school.
But her asylum claim and application for permanent residency under humanitarian and compassionate grounds have been denied.
The Canadian departments of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) and the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), say they have mechanisms in place to gather and verify information relating to asylum claims. These include information provided by the asylum seekers themselves, as well as information from other sources, including international partners.
