By Kim Bolan,
The Vancouver Sun
May 18, 2011
Four Mexican nationals found last week at a Chilliwack marijuana growing operation have all been ordered deported.
One man was sent home immediately without a hearing before the immigration board.
Three others, including a man who also holds American citizenship, all agreed with an immigration board adjudicator Monday that they had entered Canada illegally and were therefore inadmissible.
Antonio Andrade-Lomeli and his brother Israel Lomeli-Molina are expected to be sent back to Mexico later this week and will remain in detention until then. Their mother in Mexico has sent their birth certificates to the Canada Border Service Agency by courier so they can get travel documents and be sent home within days.
Immigration board member Lynda Mackie heard how the brothers had slipped into Canada last December without going through a port of entry or presenting themselves to a Canadian border guard. Lomeli-Molina admitted that he had been working illegally and had no family, friends or connections in B.C.
In a separate hearing Monday, dual American-Mexican Orlando Aurelio Owings admitted he walked across the Canada-U.S. border on Jan. 11 after being turned back by the CBSA at the Douglas border crossing.
"He entered through a park on foot," CBSA delegate Denise Reid told Mackie. "The [immigration] minister is asking that an exclusion order be made."
Owings, who had an interpreter present but spoke English, agreed with all the allegations against him.
Reid asked that Owings be held in custody until his deportation given that he came to the attention of immigration "as the result of police involvement with respect to a marijuana grow-operation in Chilliwack."
He was escorted to the U.S. border later Monday.
Because none of the Mexicans challenged the allegation they had entered Canada illegally, no information was presented at their hearings about how they came to be at a house where police found 20 kilos of B.C. bud, 600 plants and a gun. Neighbours had called police May 11 after hearing shots fired.
Three local men, including the renter of the house in the 6800-block of Unsworth Road, were also arrested and are expected to face gun and trafficking charges. Two of those men are known to police.
http://www.vancouversun.com/Mexicans+ordered+deported/4801862/story.html#ixzz1MinTQKYa
