A naturalized Canadian citizen who spent eight months in Ontario detention centres awaiting immigration officials to verify his identity is suing the Canada Border Services Agency for $10 million.
Olajide Ogunye, 47, was born in Nigeria and moved to Canada with his family in the 1990s. A few years after that, in 1996, he became a Canadian citizen. But his citizenship and Ontario health cards did not convince CBSA officers of his identity when they approached him outside his Toronto home on June 1, 2016, as he was headed to work at the hair salon he owned.
“I was confused, really confused,” Ogunye says. The officers told him they were doing a sweep of the area, he says.
After the officers searched his home and told him they did not believe he was truly Olajide Ogunye, they brought him to CBSA’s base at Pearson airport, the Greater Toronto Enforcement Centre.
According to Ogunye’s statement of claim, the officers ran his fingerprints, which they said matched the identity of a man named Oluwafemi Kayode Johnson, a failed refugee claimant who had been deported from Canada to Nigeria in the 1990s.
Ogunye says he was told the CBSA believed he was actually Johnson, who had returned to Canada illegally and assumed Ogunye’s identity. Those fingerprints, according to court documents, were never produced by the CBSA to Ogunye.
“It was very frustrating. Somebody telling you you’re not your name,” says Ogunye. “I showed them all my IDs. I showed them my citizenship. How are you going to put a Canadian citizen in jail?”
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