Stopping Deportation?

There are two ways to stop removal. First, you can ask that the date of your removal be postponed to a later date so that you can have enough time to arrange and prepare: for example, to have a pending humanitarian & compassionate H&C application decided, to get rid of some of your assets, have your children complete their school year, undergo pending medical examination, or to prepare for other related matters. This is generally referred to as a “request to defer removal”. Your request for deferral of removal must be made in writing to the Removals Officer in charge of your deporation at the Removals Unit of the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) office. Again, a timely request is of outmost importaance since, generally speaking, the Removals Unit take at least two weeks to process the request. If your request for deferral of removal is refused, you can appeal that rejection to the Federal Court.

Your second option is to appeal to the Federal Court and ask the Federal Court to review the PRRA officer’s decision. You can find more information on this in the Appeals to the Federal Court section of our website. It is of crucial importance to note that any appeal to the Federal Court in this context must be made within 15 days of the date on which you received the refusal decision.

To stop the deportation, after appealing the refusal decision of the PRRA officer, your lawyer will then have to bring an emergency motion for stay of deportation. The Federal Court has the statutory jurisdiction to make an order stopping the deportation order or removal order. The timing of the motion is critical in this context as all steps in filing the motion and the supporting documents must be taken in very short order within a matter of mere days. This is due to the fact that at the Federal Court, motions are only heard on ceratin days of the week depending on the location. For example, in Toronto, the Federal Court only hears motions on the days of its General Sittings on Mondays. In order to have a motion heard on a given Monday, the material in support of the motion must be field by the Wednesday preceding the day of the hearing. It is therefore of crucial importance to contact a lawyer experienced in Federal Court litigation at the first available opportunity so that all steps, from the filing of the appeal to the timing of the motion can be taken in a timely manner. As you can imagine, motions before the Federal Court are subject to complex procedural and evidentiary rules that can only be trusted to an experienced litigator with specific expertise in stay motions.

We offer free half hour initial consultation to assess your case? Please contact us anytime! We look forward to hearing from you.