Conservatives plan to end leniency for non-citizen criminals in Canadian courts

 

Conservatives to end leniency for non-citizen criminals

Non-citizens convicted of serious crimes should be deported,

not given leniency by virtue of their immigration status.

Michelle Rempel Garner

Aug 13, 2025

Should judges be allowed to use a non-citizen's immigration status to issue a more lenient sentence to a convicted offender for their crime?

While many Canadians would rightly say no,  2013 Supreme Court ruling (R. v. Pham) suggested otherwise, and legislation is urgently needed to address this problem. 

Here’s why.

The Pham ruling effectively allowed judges to, in certain circumstances, consider the impact of triggering a removal process under Canada’s Immigration Refugee and Protection Act (“IRPA”) provisions when issuing a sentence. Those provisions include deportation without appeal rights for non-citizens convicted in Canada of an offence under an Act of Parliament punishable by a maximum imprisonment term of at least 10 years, or for crimes in which a term exceeding six months has been imposed.

Lately, as public support for immigration has waned amid the Liberal government's rapid increases to the number of immigrants entering Canada that outpaced housing, healthcare, and job market capacities, several high-profile cases of judges applying leniency in sentencing due to potential impact on immigration status have emerged.

For example, a permanent resident received a conditional sentence after being convicted of trying to purchase sexual services from a 15-year-old, as a stronger penalty would have hindered him and his wife from obtaining Canadian citizenship. Another non-citizen in Canada on a visitor's permit was convicted of twice groping an 18-year-old woman's genitals under her skirt as she stood at the bar to buy a drink and received a discharge to avoid a permanent criminal record and allow a deportation appeal. There are many other examples that illustrate the trend of immigration status being considered in sentencing, with criminal lawyers now routinely arguing for lighter sentences so their non-citizen clients can evade deportation or denial of citizenship under IRPA's current provisions.

While it’s tempting to blame judges for this state of affairs, the fault squarely lies with the federal Liberal government, who, in spite of the increased evidence of leniency in sentencing due to consideration of immigration status in recent years, have declined to provide more clarity to judges through legislation. 

This is why once the House of Commons resumes in the fall, Conservatives will introduce legislation to amend the Criminal Code to rectify this issue. Our bill will add a section after Section 718.202 of the Criminal Code which will expressly outline that any potential impact of a sentence on the immigration status of a convicted non-citizen offender, or that of their family members, should not be taken into consideration by a judge when issuing a sentence.

The rationale for this change is straightforward. Anyone seeking residence or citizenship in Canada has responsibilities as well as rights. The citizenship guide clearly states that citizens must obey Canada's laws and respect the rights and freedoms of others, and IRPA outlines the potential consequences for non-citizens who fail to do so. Without legislative clarity on considering immigration status in sentencing, judges can apply aspects of the Pham ruling to undermine that principle for non-citizens, effectively end-running the deportation consequences already enacted by Parliament through IRPA. 

In effect, the Criminal Code amendment that Conservatives plan to propose this fall will prevent judges from using aspects of the Pham ruling to prioritize the process of entering and staying in Canada over the responsibility to respect Canadian law required of those seeking to do so. It will also help quell anger from Canadians who have read about high-profile rulings where the perception has arisen that non-citizens are receiving leniency for a crime committed on Canadian soil simply by virtue of their non-citizen status.

The vast majority of people in Canada who have immigrated here or are on temporary visas  abide by the law. Removal from Canada for non-citizens after being convicted of a serious crime is a no-brainer to both protect Canadians, the value of Canadian citizenship, and every person who resides in Canada and plays by the rules. 

After a decade of Liberal post-nationalism and excessively high immigration levels, accepting this change would allow the Liberals to demonstrate some respect for Canadian citizenship by affirming that, at minimum, the privilege of residing here for non-citizens depends on adherence to the rule of law.

ICE Detention Center Says It’s Not Responsible for Staff's Sexual Abuse of Detainees

Victoria López, Senior Staff Attorney, ACLU National Prison Project
& Sandra Park, Senior Staff Attorney, ACLU Women's Rights Project

All 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the federal government impose criminal liability on correctional facility staff who have sexual contact with people in their custody. These laws recognize that any sexual activity between detainees and detention facility staff, with or without the use of force, is unlawful because of the inherent power imbalance when people are in custody. Yet, one immigration detention center is trying to avoid responsibility for sexual violence within its walls by arguing that the detainee “consented” to sexual abuse.

E.D., an asylum-seeker and domestic violence survivor from Honduras, was sexually assaulted by an employee while she was detained with her 3-year-old child at the Berks Family Residential Center in Pennsylvania. At the time of the assault, E.D. was 19 years old.

She filed suit against the detention center and its staff for their failure to protect her from sexual violence, even though they were aware of the risk. The record in the case, E.D. v. Sharkey, shows that her assailant coerced and threatened her, including with possible deportation, while the defendants stood by and made jokes.

Although the employee pled guilty to criminal institutional sexual assault under Pennsylvania law, the defendants contend that they should not be liable for any constitutional violations. Their argument rests in part on their assessment that the sexual abuse was “consensual” and that they should be held to a different standard because the Berks Family Residential Center is an immigration detention facility rather than a jail or prison.  

The ACLU, ACLU of Pennsylvania, and partner organizations filed an amicus brief this week supporting E.D., explaining that officials wield such tremendous control over the lives of those in their custody, including through coercion and exploitation, that consent to sexual contact cannot be freely given in these circumstances. We also discuss how sexual violence in custodial settings is a serious and pervasive issue, including in immigration detention. For many years, the ACLU, various advocacy groups, and immigrants themselves have reported on the unsafe conditions in immigration detention, including sexual violence and the retaliation that detained immigrants face when they decide to come forward with these violations.  

A recent investigation into sexual abuse in immigration detention found that there were 1,448 allegations of sexual abuse filed with ICE between 2012 and March 2018. In 2017 alone, there were 237 allegations of sexual abuse in immigration detention facilities.

Other reports include a 2014 complaint documenting widespread allegations of sexual harassment at the Karnes County Residential Center, where more than 500 women were detained with their children. In 2017, advocates filed a complaint on behalf of eight immigrants who recounted their experiences of sexual violence while detained in various ICE detention facilities across the country.

The Government Accountability Office reported in 2013 that officials at immigration prisons and jails failed to report 40 percent of sexual abuse allegations to the ICE headquarters. After looking at 10 different detention centers and analyzing over 70 cases of sexual abuse, researchers found that only 7 percent of 215 allegations of sexual assault in immigration detention facilities from 2009 to 2013 were substantiated, calling into question the thoroughness of investigations as well as reporting and oversight mechanisms.

Sexual violence impacts immigrants across federal agencies that are charged with immigrant detention. Most recently in Arizona, the state’s Department of Health Services, which licenses facilities that are used by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service’s Office of Refugee Resettlement to detain migrant children, moved to revoke the license of Southwest Key, a nonprofit contractor that rakes in about a half a billion dollars to detain migrant children in facilities across the country. The state moved to revoke the group’s license because Southwest Key failed to comply with required employee background checks. At least three former employees have been arrested for sexually abusing migrant children. One was convicted, and one of the facilities was closed down following allegations of staff abusing children.    

These are not isolated cases. They clearly show that officials are not doing enough to detect and respond to incidents of sexual abuse in immigration detention. The result is that immigrants are put at serious risk for sexual violence while they are detained.

The Prison Rape Elimination Act was passed by Congress in 2003 to protect against sexual assault in prisons and jails across the country. It took the Department of Homeland Security until 2014 to finalize regulations implementing PREA. Even with those regulations in place, DHS PREA standards do not protect immigrants in all detention facilities because the agency has taken the position that those requirements can only apply when the agency enters into new contracts or renews or modifies old ones.

Rather than meaningfully addressing these endemic problems in immigration detention, the Trump administration continues to aggressively target immigrants and asylum seekers by stripping away legal protections, ramping up enforcement, and expanding immigration detention. E.D.’s case highlights the real need for greater protections against sexual abuse and more robust oversight and accountability measures in immigration detention, not less.  

Gruesome Honour Rape, Torture, Killing of Muslim Girl in London

Banaz Mahmod, 20, was raped, tortured and garroted in a two hour ordeal at her parents home in London before she was buried in a suitcase in the back garden

The Mirror

She chose a boyfriend outside of her family’s strict regime, and paid with her life by being tortured to death by her father, uncle and cousins and unceremoniously dumped in a suitcase.

Banaz Mahmod was raped, tortured and strangled with a length of plastic cord at her parents’ home in a brutal honour killing after her family felt she had “shamed” them by divorcing her arranged marriage husband and choosing her own partner.

The Kurdish 20-year-old had even heard her family discussing the plot to kill her and her boyfriend at a ‘family war council’ and had delivered a handwritten letter to police revealing the men who were “ready to do the job.”

Months later she was dead, buried several feet beneath the ground below a leaking pipe, her body bundled into a suitcase where it was left to rot.

And it was an innocent kiss outside Morden tube station in south London that was the act that would determine her death – after someone who knew Banaz and her strict Iraqi family spotted her with the man she had fallen in love with.

“What must it have been like for her getting up every morning, going downstairs and not knowing what was going to happen that day?” said crime writer Mark Billingham, who had been so affected by the case it inspired him to write novel Love Like Blood.

“She was living every minute, of every hour of every day in absolute terror.”

Banaz had drawn the ire of her family by leaving the man she had been wedded to through an arranged marriage, and finding her own boyfriend in Iranian Rahmat Sulemani. The pair were reportedly besotted with each other, texting every morning and night.

“They worshipped one another and they tried to keep apart,” added Mark. “They knew the trouble they were going to get in but they couldn’t be without one another so they would meet secretly.”

It was this meeting, outside Morden tube station in 2005, that would start off a chain of events that saw Banaz’s father ply her with brandy before, she believed, he was to attempt to kill her. It also led Banaz to record the fact she was being followed and monitored by her family, and that she had learnt of their plans to murder her on 2nd December 2005.

In a letter to police where she referred to members of her family by numbers, Banaz said she knew she was being followed and wrote: “Numbers 2, 3, 4 and 5 said they are ready and willing to do the job of killing me and my boyfriend.”

More than 50 people involved

Four months later Banaz was dead. Five members of her family have been convicted of her murder – sentenced to a total of 100 years in prison. Police said more than 50 people were actually involved in the case – some in the cover up of her body and others who offered to lie for the family members arrested for her murder.

So, apparently, the whole community was in agreement with this honour-killing. Nice! Britain needs more Muslims with such a high, moral, standard of honour.

Rahmat, who had to assume a secret identity and live under police protection , once told in an interview how there was “no life” for him after Banaz’s death at 20. Last year, 10 years after the death of his girlfriend, Rahmat hanged himself.

Mark added: “It is desperately sad. You go back to the two of them meeting outside that tube station, having that kiss, and 10 years later they are both dead.

“I thought an honour killing was a father or uncle strangling a nephew, niece or daughter. I didn’t realise that it could involve quite as many people and be quite as brutal as what happened to Banaz.”

Banaz’s father Mahmod Mahmod was sentenced to a minimum 20 years and his brother Ari, the head of the family, 23 years. Mohamad Hama, 30, was jailed for at least 17 years for the killing in Mitcham, Surrey.

Mohammed Ali fled to Iraq and was later extradited and jailed

Mohammed Ali, 30, and Omar Hussain, 32, were also jailed for life after they were extradited from Iraq after fleeing the UK in 2006.

Omar Hussain

Old Bailey judge Brian Barker told the men when they were sentenced: “This was barbaric. For you, respect was more important than your flesh and blood.”

Mark spoke about the case on Written in Blood, which is due to be broadcast on CBS Reality and follows the case of Banaz, and how her family determined to kill her.

Born on 16th December, 1985, Banaz moved to the UK from Iraq with her family in 1995 when she was 10, along with her parents, four sisters and a brother as well as lots of extended family members. They were a typical Iraqi family, with strong views on the role of women.

Typical Muslim family - the role of women is to be invisible.

She was married to a man through an arranged marriage who was 10 years older than her, illiterate and didn’t speak English. And he used to beat and rape her, repeatedly.Caroline Goode, an officer for the Metropolitan Police who worked on the case, said when one of Banaz’s sisters found her covered in bruises they confronted her husband.

“He said ‘yes, I do beat your daughter but it’s because she’s disrespectful. And yes I do force her to have sex, but only when she says no.’ The family felt that was acceptable and sent Banaz back to try harder to be a better wife to her husband.

“In her words ‘he treated me as if I was shoe’, that he could put on whenever he wanted.”

But Banaz went against the family tradition and after two years left her husband in 2005, striking up a relationship with her friend Rahmat.

Her family warned off Rahmat and the pair did their best to conceal the relationship.

Caroline, who said she is still haunted by the case, added: “A council of war was held at Ari Mahmod’s house where the decision was made that Banaz and Rahmat would both be killed. Ari Mahmod rang Banaz’s mother and her that that was going to happen. In his words ‘they are bringing shame on the family and that b**** and that b****** are going to die.”

Ari Mahmod, uncle of Banaz

Banaz overheard the conversation and handed her letter to the Metropolitan Police in December 2005. She contacted police five times about her family, saying she was sure they were following her. Then, on New Year’s Eve, her father took her to her grandmother’s house where he fed her brandy while wearing blue gloves, constantly telling Banaz not to look at him.

She escaped by smashing a window before collapsing in a cafe and being taken to hospital, covered in blood. She she told police she was convinced her dad would kill her. Her boyfriend also recorded a chilling video of her as she lay in hospital.

At this stage Banaz had no where else to go and her family arranged to meet her in a McDonald’s in Tooting. Her dad apologised and told Rahmat he should not have listened to his brother. They promised nothing would happen to her and convinced her to go home.

I've seen this many times in honour-killing cases where the family swears they will not harm the girl, then as soon as she is in the door they torture and murder her. Lying is no problem for these people. There is no respect for truth and no genuine fear of God.

Mahmod Mahmod,

the dad of murder victim Banaz Mahmod

But they lied.

On 22nd January 2006 Rahmat was almost abducted by two men who told him they would kill him, and Banaz. The pair went to the police on 23rd January and Banaz was due to return the next day to give a statement.

However, she never turned up. Instead she was raped and tortured by her family. Dead at the age of 20.

On 24th January 2006, Rahmat reported Banaz missing.

Her family insisted she had not gone missing and told police that they were progressive and embraced a westernised life – with their daughters free to come and go as they pleased. They suggested she had simply gone to stay with a friend.

They have no problem lying to the police either! The Met Police, unfortunately, completely failed Banaz and Rahmat and share some responsibility for their deaths. This should be investigated to determine what, if anything, the police did, and what they might have done. For instance, they could have gone to her parents and told them that if anything happens to Banaz, they will be held personally responsible and will go to prison for many years. Did they do that? Apparently not.

Outraged at the lack of love

As police searched woods and tried to question her family, doors were slammed in their faces and the family failed to follow up her disappearance. Police found no photos of her in the family home and according to Caroline Goode, officers were said to be “outraged at the lack of love.”

But it was the charging of her cousin Mohamad Hama, after he came forward to admit that he had been there when Rahmat was threatened that was to be the turning point.

As Hama was held in cells waiting to appear in court, his phone conversations were covertly recorded.

“He was callously describing the murder to a relative and they were congratulating themselves on how manly they were,” said Caroline. “And they described that murder in the most gruesome of terms.

“They had anally raped Banaz, she was vomiting she was so afraid. They had wrapped a cord three times around her neck so tightly that it was biting into her flesh. He described having his feet on her back and pulling and pulling on that cord. Can you imagine the horror of that situation?

“It took more than half an hour for her to die.”

Police were left hunting for her body, using mobile phone records to trace two family members and their frequent journeys to Birmingham. They knew she was buried in a back garden in a house with bricked up walls, but didn’t know where. They used the police helicopter that identified many potential sites, but it was when Hama asked his friend on the phone if anyone had found the body and if he had ‘put the freezer back’ over the body, that Caroline knew the site.

It was excavated and the body was found in a hole, stuffed inside a suitcase. It had been left beneath a leaking pipe, left to rot so badly that no DNA could be taken from her body.

25% of Norway Sex Offenders in 2015 Have Immigrant Background

© Fyodor Porokhin / Reuters

One in four sex offenses in Norway last year were committed by people with immigrant backgrounds, according to local broadcaster TV2.

Of 399 people convicted for this type of crime in Norway, 90 had an immigrant background.

According to Statistics Norway the immigrant population make up 15.6 percent of the population in Norway. The number includes immigrants and children born in Norway to two immigrant parents. The five largest immigrant groups in Norway are in turn Polish, Swedish, Somali, Lithuanian and Pakistani.

At the beginning of 1992 the immigrant population in Norway was 183,000 persons, or 4.3 per cent of the total population. 23 years later, at the beginning of 2015, the number had risen to 815,000 persons, (or 15.6 per cent of the population.) The immigration has increased drastically in recent years, with net immigration exceeding 40,000.

Unfortunately, these data are not all that helpful. They are for the beginning of 2015 whereas during 2015 many more migrants from Muslim countries entered Norway. Initially, the numbers don't look too terrible - 15.6% immigrants : less than 25% sex abusers. What would be helpful is if they could parse out the European immigrants from the Muslim immigrants. I suspect the ratio would be substantially higher.

Also, the stats of 90:399 are based on convictions. I don't know how efficient Norway's justice system is, but I suspect that most sexual offences committed in 2015 have not reached conviction level.

So basically, this is a 'better than reality' report for Norway's problem with immigrant sexual abuse.

The country’s authorities have even recently launched anti-rape programs for migrants.

When deciding how to define an ‘immigrant,’ TV2 relied on Statistics Norway, which states the term refers to “a person born outside of the country to two foreign parents or born in Norway to two foreign-born parents.”

“It’s not necessary one’s ethnic background that can accurately explain these figures. It could be finances, it could be age, in this case it is almost exclusively men, so you can’t bring in gender but these are the kinds of factors you must take into account,” Kristian Gundersen, a professor of biology at the University of Oslo, told The Local.

News of sex offense cases has become frequent across Europe, with the influx of refugees exceeding one million over the last year.

In particular, the report comes just a day after a 16-year-old Afghan refugee, who had recently taken a course on how to behave towards women, was charged with raping a female employee at a refugee shelter in Belgium.

A few days earlier, four migrants were charged with raping and beating a 19-year-old female friend. The four also filmed the crime, with the video later being used as key evidence.

Earlier in February, Austria was shocked by the news of an Iraqi refugee raping a 10-year-old boy at a swimming pool in Vienna.

7-Year Old Girl Raped at Playground in Germany

Rapist apparently from North Africa

The unknown man abused the 7-year old hidden behind trees. Then he ran away across the parking lot towards the railway station.

Park of Victims of Fascism

By Ronny Licht, Mopo4

Chemnitz, Germany – it happened in broad daylight. A unknown man abused a girl (7) on Monday night in Chemnitz.

The heinous act took place in the “Park of the victims of fascism”, next to the St. John’s Church. On the playground the children played while the mothers sat chatting.

Among the trees in the background the unknown man abused the 7 -year-old.
Then he ran through the parking lot towards the station

18.30 clock the man lured the 7-year-old in an unobserved moment into the bushes. Then the sex offender held the girl’s mouth and took advantage of her.

Police spokeswoman Heidi Hennig: “The suspect then fled across the parking lot at the Bahnhofstraße/Augustusburger Straße towards the station.”

Although the victim told her mother immediately of the act, an investigation by the police brought no arrest.

Chemnitz Opera House

Now the police hope for more information. Witnesses can call this number: 0371/387-495808. According to testimony, the offender to which will be 30 years old, he wore a gray T-Shirt, a long blue pants and brown Nike sneakers at the time of the crime.

According to police, a scar on his left cheek was striking. He had a white cell phone and the manufacturing model, and according to witness accounts, indicating North African.

That little girl provided an amazing description of her attacker. God help her in dealing with this.

Chemnitz, Germany

Germany is planning on bringing in 200,000 more refugees, many of whom will come from North Africa, most of whom will be Muslim. Germany's rape statistics will soon be approaching Sweden's as a generation of young German girls are sacrificed on the altar of political correctness.