Even in Canada: a high-profile government sting that targeted 24 South Asian men has set off national controversy and a vibrant, immigrant-led defense.

Early on the morning of August 14, 2003, 24 South Asian men awoke to the sound of their doors getting smashed in. Through a sting operation known as Project Thread where Canadian intelligence agencies sought out potential terrorist cells, police stormed into their apartments and threw everyone inside on the ground. Vans whisked all 24 to the maximum-security Maplehurst Detention Center. No one was allowed to call a lawyer. Meanwhile, reporters and politicians blared that an "Al-Qaeda sleeper cell" had been found with plans to bomb a nuclear power plant or explode a dirty bomb into the city.

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Think this happened somewhere in the States? Guess again. It happened in Toronto, just one incident in an alarming pattern that has characterized the war on terror's migration to the Great White North.

The Canadian Dream

Though its progressive immigration laws have never made Canada an anti-racist paradise, it has meant that hundreds of thousands of refugees and immigrants chose Canada over the States from the 1970s to the 1990s, creating vibrant communities where Somalis hang with Tamils hang with Trinis hang with Chileans.

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But since Sept. 11, Canada has experienced its own brand of immigrant bashing and "terrorist" targeting. From nationally prominent incidents such as the case of Maher Arar, the Syrian Canadian computer engineer detained and sent to over a year of torture in Jordan, to less well-known but widespread harassment and discrimination--Canada has shown that it is far from a safe haven for South Asians and Arabs. Immediately following Sept. 11, just like in the U.S., mosques, Hindu and Jain temples and Sikh gurdwaras suffered arson and daily harassment. Changes to the Immigration Act followed, whereby non-citizens may now be jailed without charge on the say-so of a cabinet minister, held under what is called a "security certificate" and not allowed to know the allegations against them. Six men now languish in jail under these PATRIOT-like rules.

In 2003, Citizenship and Immigration Canada and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), Canada's equivalent to the FBI, began an investigation they called "Project Thread," whose purpose was to seek out potential terrorist cells throughout Canada. They collected three vans full of evidence based on what Terry McKay, the lawyer representing the minister of immigration, called "a suggestion [there] might in fact be ... a sleeper cell for Al Qaeda." Actually, the suspects were a random collection of 24 South Asian men, many of whom didn't even know each other. Their only connection was that they were Muslim and most of them had come to Canada on student visas to Ottawa Business College--a school that turned out to be an empty storefront. Fearful of running into hassles with Immigration Canada, the men kept quiet and just found other places to work or go to school. Some were doctors; some were small businessmen hoping to improve their skills and English and then return to Pakistan to get married.

The evidence the RCMP turned up was scanty at best. They claimed to have a picture of one detainee, Mohammed Waheed, in front of a nuclear power plant--even though it was later documented by his lawyers that he wasn't in the country on that day. Much was made of the fact that the men lived in "cells"--apartments shared with other immigrant men from the same country--and that one who was in flight school had flown over the Pickering nuclear power plant. In fact, the plant is included in the standard flight path for all trainees because it lies on the shores of Lake Ontario and flight students aren't allowed to fly over the city. By November, RCMP head Giuliano Zaccardelli had publicly admitted there were no terrorist links to the men. The students were found guilty of committing immigration fraud because the school they were attending was not a government-recognized institution, even though their visas to attend the school had been approved by the government in the first place.

"The public security and anti-terrorism unit had an interest in capturing 24 Muslim men, to say to the U.S., the rest of the world and Canada, 'Look what we're doing in the war on terrorism. Look at how we're justifying the extraordinary powers that were given to us that violate the Canadian Charter of Rights and international human rights. But it's OK, because look at what we're doing to protect you," said Amina Sherazee, a Muslim Canadian Congress member and lawyer for many of the Project Thread deportees. Others have asked why only "the Mohammeds" were arrested, while other students from the fake school who weren't Muslim were granted legal residency by Immigration.

The week of the arrests, while the media continued to all but assume the guilt of these 24 immigrants, a meeting was called at the Lahore Tikka House, a popular halal restaurant in one of Toronto's largest South Asian neighborhoods. "It was really cool seeing the community and activists coming together, that ordinary Muslim and South Asian folks were so angered by this that they took the risk to come out," said Amandeep Kaur Panag, one of the organizers of the new "Project Threadbare" that came out of those initial community meetings.

"At the second meeting, someone made the suggestion that we should go into the prison and see what was happening to the men," Kaur Panag remembered. "Most of us had no experience doing that kind of thing, but we did it anyway. That's when we found out that the men weren't being allowed to see lawyers, that they were woken up every morning by guards shouting 'Hey Al Qaeda, hey Taliban.' None of this had been reported anywhere."

Coalition members also discovered that the men had been denied a chance to speak to anyone but a representative of Immigration Canada, who told many of the detainees that if they signed papers waiving their right to a hearing, it would get them released faster. In reality, it meant deportation. This waiver doesn't exist in the Canadian Immigration Act, according to Threadbare members. To get the men out on bail, Immigration demanded bonds as high as $50,000 for some of the men. Threadbare members began raising the money from their community, as well as finding pro bono lawyers. By late October, all of the men were either out on bail or back in Pakistan.

Exonerate, Compensate, Apologize, Naturalize 

Many of the men have been either forced back to Pakistan or are on their way there. Threadbare, with its mission to "Exonerate, Compensate, Apologize, Naturalize," has not been able to win the exoneration of the men. Charges had never been formally made and hence have not been formally withdrawn. "Their names were splashed all around the world with headlines linking them to Al Qaeda," said Farrah Miranda, a member of Threadbare. Such a smear campaign is just as effective as formal charges, making it difficult for the men to return to Pakistan, a country where extra-judicial executions and other human rights violations are common.

"Because they were once the subject of an investigation and the charges were never formally cleared, as long as there's something lingering, Immigration Canada refers it to the War Crimes unit of Immigration," says Sherazee.

For those slated for deportation and unable to make a refugee claim, only one option remains: to make one last appeal to Immigration Canada that their home country is an unsafe place for them. As of May 2004, 14 of the men have been denied status and put on planes back to Pakistan. Upon arrival in Pakistan, three of the deported men were taken into federal custody, held without food or water and interrogated for 16 hours, according to reports some have filed with the Independent Human Rights Commission. Some of them are unable to leave their homes out of fear, and most have difficulty getting or keeping jobs.

"One guy, Mohammad Imran, was beaten up recently by men who were shouting 'terrorist' and 'deportee,'" Kaur said. "When he tried to go to a doctor, they wouldn't see him without a police report, which the police refused to give him; and due to all this, he ended up losing his job that he'd gotten with much difficulty after not leaving the house for four months. And there's no welfare in Pakistan."

On March 18, 2004, despite 300 pages of evidence testifying to the danger he would face if returned to Pakistan, Immigration Canada rejected 23-year-old student Fahim Kayani's appeal. He was scheduled for a deportation flight home to Lahore. Frustrated by the official non-response and fearful for Kayani's safety in Pakistan, Project Threadbare members decided to take things to the next level. On March 23, 14 Threadbare members, with the support of Kayani and the other deportees, occupied Immigration Minister Jude Sgro's office demanding a stay of Kayani's deportation. Instead, security pepper-sprayed the group and dragged them into paddy wagons, where they were arrested and held overnight. Their arrests made headlines in Toronto and nationally.

However, in a move smacking of payback, Kayani received two voice mails from his immigration officer hours after the arrests. When he called back, the officer asked him to go to the Greater Toronto Enforcement Centre. Frightened, he complied. Officers took him into custody and questioned him extensively about "the activists that were making trouble," and then drove him to Montreal and put him on a plane to Pakistan. "I'd gotten a call from him that morning. He was sounding very desperate and very scared," Kaur recalled. "The next thing we heard, he'd been arrested and his roommate got a call saying to bring all of his things within an hour or they'd put him on the plane without them. We got on the phone to Gord Morris, the head of removals, and got "sorry, he's already on the plane" when he was actually being shipped to Montreal."

On April 20, Zahoor Hussain became the 14th victim of Project Thread to be deported back to Pakistan. Another 500 pages of evidence documenting Pakistan's history of torturing, beating and detaining anyone labeled as a "terror suspect" were submitted to the Federal Court. The documents described how Hussain's family has been repeatedly threatened in Pakistan. Hussain's lawyer, Jackie Esmonde, again argued that the Canadian government, having caused the situation for the men's jeopardy, had some responsibility to make up for it. The presiding judge replied, "In this day and age, you can't expect that to happen."

Those That Remain

Project Threadbare organizers say they've realized from this year of struggle that fighting for immigrant rights brings deep costs and challenges when it's your own community that is targeted. It's risky for people whose immigration situations aren't ironclad themselves to keep coming out to meetings and participating in actions. At the same time, Threadbare members say, their sit-in was viewed with suspicion in some quarters of their community. "Some people thought we were put up to it by some other activist group, that people of color just don't do direct action. But believe me, when we see the way these policies are affecting communities, we have to be willing to take more risks," said Kaur.

Nevertheless, the coalition is determined to keep fighting. "We want to make this an issue at the federal election happening this summer," said Kaur. "Whether or not I believe in electoral politics, every day people's lives are being affected by these policies. To have any of this legislation is disgusting. It's hard though--so many people are telling us there's no way Canada's going to exonerate these guys, that people just like the Threadbare men are deported every day. And they're right."

The project is planning community forums to keep people up-to-date about the cases of the remaining six men and organizing around their refugee hearings, all coming up this summer. They may also bring out South Asian immigrants to march on the nation's capital, Ottawa.

They have many allies. Heads Up Collective, born out of the Colours of Resistance network of activists of color, has been visiting deportees held at the Celebrity Inn (an infamous, squalid motel/immigration jail near the Pearson International Airport in Toronto) since before Sept. 11, bringing such necessities as translators, tampons, lawyer's numbers and children's toys. Other allies include the No One Is Illegal Campaign, and the Action Committee for Non-Status Algerians, which is fighting Canada's recent lifting of a moratorium on deportations to Algeria.

It will be up to groups like these to determine the future for Canadian immigrants and refugees--one where the promise of sanctuary and self-determination is fulfilled, or one in which Canada bows down to the U.S. path of domestic terrorism.

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is a U.S.-raised, Toronto-based queer Sri Lankan writer and spoken word artist. Her work can be found in the anthologies Colonize This!, Without a Net, and Brazen Femmes, and zines and magazines including Bamboo Girl, Bitch and Broken Pencil.